Rear sway bar

[Bruce]

Which upper arm did you remove and how did you decide.

[svono50]

I removed the driver's side, mainly because I had more clearance on the passenger side to get the spherical bearing into the housing, FWIW. If you read around the interwebs, it seems the driver's side is usually the one that gets pulled for various reasons. I haven't gone back and swapped arms to see if there is a difference or not...and if there is, I likely couldn't tell. YMMV.

[Bruce]

I just wonder about the torque applied to the one torque box. I wonder if the quad shocks would help or bind. Mine have been off since I put the good uppers on. Corner carvers posts state the torque box will fail its not if but when. Thats not something I want to have to fix, or have break for that matter.

[GAboySVO]

Do you have a torque arm installed or just the watts link? If you install the MM torque arm, you can remove both uppers. The torque arm will prevent axle wind up, the lowers locate the axel fore and aft and the watts link keeps it centered.

The torque arm installation is straight forward if you already have an 8.8 in the car.

[svono50]

Mike, we both just have the Watts...no torque arm. I know folks worry about the upper mount tearing away, but our cars don't apply the same 'hit' of torque like the 5.0L and up guys do. I don't really do very many drag launches any more and rolling into the throttle doesn't 'whack' the suspension like a drag launch does. Now, that doesn't mean that we could have issues with our upper chassis plate. I believe MM sells an upper reinforcement kit to help mitigate any damage. My buddy with an '03 GT did that on his Watts equipped vehicle when he went PM3L. I will monitor and determine if/when I install the kit myself.

I found a pic of the lone passenger upper with the Wolfe Racecraft spherical bearing in place. The green stuff is marine grease and the upper arm is an adjustable UMI arm with their Roto-joint front bushing.

Spherical Bearing - Wolfe Racecraft_Rear Upper_Pass_01.jpg

I also found the pic I took when testing out how much bind was present with both upper arms in place. I unbolted one of the Watts links and pivoted the axle up 1.5" to mimic a cornering load, then held the link back up to its mount. The misalignment was a lot more than anticipated. This means that my axle tube mounting brackets were being splayed apart ~3/8" per side...not a good load to be putting into the axle tubes.

Offset - 4 link plus watts link.jpg

[Bruce]

The torque arm looked to kill ground clearance. Driving on the street I have enough of a problem with that now. I also have enough money in my car now. The torque arm needs different springs too as I recall.

[GAboySVO]

The torque arm looked to kill ground clearance. Driving on the street I have enough of a problem with that now. I also have enough money in my car now. The torque arm needs different springs too as I recall.

Bruce,

Just remember that it travels with the axle. I have never had an issue with clearance. I guess if you straddled a 4 inch high mound, you might scrape the arm.

[Bruce]

2 Large speed bumps on the way into my autocross site resemble that remark!

[svono50]

Bruce, the PM3L also could use new springs as I noted, since you remove the bind in the rear suspension, like what the torque arm does. The MM 'torque arm' rear springs are reasonable at $140. I should have mine in place in a couple of weeks.

[GAboySVO]

2 Large speed bumps on the way into my autocross site resemble that remark!

Speed bumps are no issue as long as you don't straddle them long ways. If you go over them perpendicular to the bump, the torque arm remains the same distance from the top of the bump as it does on flat ground.

The other added benefit of the torque arm is that it helps reduce nose dive during hard breaking. The rotation of the rear axle causes the torque arm to "pull" down on its forward connection point which is just aft of the tranny.