
Panhard Bar Installation Part 1
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Author: Michael Yount

Ordered the tubing for the bar – 4 feet of .750″ OD x .065″ wall tubing. The tubing, matching threaded rod ends and jam nuts showed up from Summit Racing first.



I bought a grade 8 7/16″ -20 bolt, applied NeverSieze and ran the bolt into/out of the ends to be sure the threads were clean. Others have advised that I put the bolt into the threads while I’m welding the tube ends in place and leave it until the tube has completely cooled. Then remove the bolt — supposedly helps ensure the integrity of the threads during the welding process. The tube ends are designed to ‘fit’ .750″ x .065″ wall tubing. TIGHT squeeze. So with a bit of clean up sanding on the outside of the tube end and a sanding roll on the Dremel for the inside of the tube — perfect, snug fit.



The rod ends showed up today — 7/16″, stainless, PFTE lined — should be plenty strong for this application. Went with both right hand threads because trying to communicate with Summit (who didn’t have the LH thread version in their online catalog) during Covid has been challenging at best. Besides, this should be set the length and forget it – so not a hardship to have it disconnected at the beginning to set length and then put it back together.

So – on to fabricating the brackets for the axle connection at the lower shock mount and the body/chassis connection on the trunk floor. I removed the bottom of the shock out of the ‘ears’ to which I’m going to attach the bracket I fabricate. You can see that the eye of the shock is narrower than the space between the mounting ears — previous owner or builder tightened until he bent the ear into contact with the shock bushing (and deformed the bushing).


When I re-assemble I’ll make a call as to whether I’m comfortable with the shock bushings and shocks. Not very expensive to replace — about $28 a piece for KYB gas pressure shocks for this application. I cut a few metal tabs to begin to shape the pieces that will attach to these shock ears.

The trick here — is precisely where do you drill the holes in the ‘legs’ of the U-shaped bracket so that everything lines up the way it should? I put a level on the rocker panel and set zero — I want the back plate shown above to sit perpendicular to ‘level’ for the car. So I carefully positioned things the way I wanted, then carefully removed the clamp while holding the tab on the shock ear — easier said than done. Once I had the clamp out of the way, I could use the hole in the shock ear to mark the tab for drilling. Seemed to work well – pics below.








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