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- 2012 Mazda 5
Decided to swap out my racing beat rear sway bar with one from JBR. The RB one was a little narrow for the 2012 5. It placed the brackets at the start of the bends and was eating bushing, breaking brackets and causing slight binding until the bushing were worn. Note: RB does not make a bar specifically for the 5. I used a 3 bar, removed the stoppers and added shaft collars to adapt it to the 5.
JBR Bar
RB Bar
The first things I noticed with the JBR bar was it's much lighter. Quality and workmanship is top notch. It's thicker at 1.25in (31.75mm) vs racing beats 1.062in (27mm) but RB is solid. The JBR bar has 3 settings vs the RB's 1. The last thing I noticed is that the endlink holes are drilled at 12mm. (uhm) Both the 3 and 5 have 10mm endlink studs. A quick email to JBR yielded "All of our sway bars have the 12mm holes. We do this because the 2mm difference is insignificant. Also because many choose to upgrade the rear end links to the Mazdaspeed OEM or OEM equivalent and this wouldn’t be possible if the holes were only 10mm."
I didn't agree on the idea of relying on the clamping action to hold the endlinks in place so I set out to find or make a spacer. Going through my junks I came across some heli-coil inserts. They were the correct thread m10-1.5. I placed them on a bolt and voil! almost a perfect 12mm.
Heli-coil insert on bolt
Heli-coil insert in the softest setting
The rest of the installation is pretty simple. Didn't even have to jack up the 5. Sorry no pics of the whole process.
Result vs RB...
Ride is similar. Performance is a little improved. I set the bar to it's middle setting. Car is closer to neutral. I didn't want to go to stiff because with the H&R and Koni shocks, I didn't want to introduce oversteer. Esp since it's been raining quite often the last few weeks.
Result vs stock...
Ride is a lot rougher over uneven bumps. Bumps and dips that both tires travel through are unchanged. Much less understeer closer to neutral.
other notes: I opted for the upgraded brackets and have AWR endlinks. The AWR endlinks do make a little more noise but Tony's newest ones are 10x better that those I got from him just a few years ago for my NC Miata. He is using teflon inserts and big rubber o-rings to bring the noise down to a minimum. I switched to AWR's rose joint endlinks after breaking my stock set and 2 sets from corksport.
Bonus shot
JBR Bar
RB Bar
The first things I noticed with the JBR bar was it's much lighter. Quality and workmanship is top notch. It's thicker at 1.25in (31.75mm) vs racing beats 1.062in (27mm) but RB is solid. The JBR bar has 3 settings vs the RB's 1. The last thing I noticed is that the endlink holes are drilled at 12mm. (uhm) Both the 3 and 5 have 10mm endlink studs. A quick email to JBR yielded "All of our sway bars have the 12mm holes. We do this because the 2mm difference is insignificant. Also because many choose to upgrade the rear end links to the Mazdaspeed OEM or OEM equivalent and this wouldn’t be possible if the holes were only 10mm."
I didn't agree on the idea of relying on the clamping action to hold the endlinks in place so I set out to find or make a spacer. Going through my junks I came across some heli-coil inserts. They were the correct thread m10-1.5. I placed them on a bolt and voil! almost a perfect 12mm.
Heli-coil insert on bolt
Heli-coil insert in the softest setting
The rest of the installation is pretty simple. Didn't even have to jack up the 5. Sorry no pics of the whole process.
Result vs RB...
Ride is similar. Performance is a little improved. I set the bar to it's middle setting. Car is closer to neutral. I didn't want to go to stiff because with the H&R and Koni shocks, I didn't want to introduce oversteer. Esp since it's been raining quite often the last few weeks.
Result vs stock...
Ride is a lot rougher over uneven bumps. Bumps and dips that both tires travel through are unchanged. Much less understeer closer to neutral.
other notes: I opted for the upgraded brackets and have AWR endlinks. The AWR endlinks do make a little more noise but Tony's newest ones are 10x better that those I got from him just a few years ago for my NC Miata. He is using teflon inserts and big rubber o-rings to bring the noise down to a minimum. I switched to AWR's rose joint endlinks after breaking my stock set and 2 sets from corksport.
Bonus shot
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