ATTENTION! Addco 509 front sway bar owners:

[Trouper]

As many of you know, I have been in constant contact with Addco about the problems with the Addco #509 front sway bar. Many members like myself have noticed that the sway bar has been making contact with the frame under full suspension travel. In my case, the contact forced the bar down hard enough to destroy my ENS greasable bushing mounts, and leave rub marks on the bar and frame. Addco has been in constant contact with me about the problem, and ask that all members that have this bar installed on their car, check to see if you have signs of contact with the frame. It appears that the 509 bar was made 2 inches too short, and they are willing to do all that is necessary to fix the problem. They will either make a retrofit kit to fix this problem, or re-design the bars and ship new ones to all that have this problem, for free. Trey @ Addco asked me to get a list of members that have this bar installed and are experiencing a problem, and forward that info to him. They plan on solving this problem quickly, and it is first in priority after the November SEMA show. Please email me with your name and preferred email so I can forward it to Addco for the future retrofit kit or a new bar.

Thanks!

John "Trouper" Troup
troup1993@aol.com

[woaface]

You think they'd figure out the tolerances for that kind of thing? Oh well, sounds like they're doing a good job as far as tech support goes!

[TAF]

ADDCO Part#509 must be specific to pre-'03 CVs & GM...'cause that's not the bar for the Marauder/post '03 Panthers it's ADDCO Part# 2196.

[metroplex]

03-up Panthers aren't the same as pre-03 in terms of suspension.

Regarding the pre-03 Front Sway Bar:

I addressed this on CVN:
I bought 509 from Summit Racing mid-2001 and it CAME with two spacers that you install between the bushing and frame. THis is the SAME style of spacer that Erol/Loaded98LS installed to correct the rubbing issue.

After 3+ years, I noticed zero rubbing on the front sway bar so the spacers worked.

According to Trey, you can email him asking for spacers. This suggests they just did not include the spacers in the 509 kit recently - I do not know why but that's the case because both Trouper and Erol did not find the spacers.

IMHO its not a "problem" that Addco never addressed... it's a problem that Addco addressed but somehow didn't bother following up with customers/kits to make sure those spacers were included.