Sway Bar or It's a Start or Just a Sway'n

    Today I took the sway bar off the car and cleaned up the bar, bushing brackets and stabilizer linkage rods. Well actually the kit will come with the stabilizer linkage components so I only did the bar and brackets that hold it to the car. I put everything else in a vinegar soak to clean up and possibly sell. Once I finished the brackets I put those in the soak as well to get the parts I could not reach with the wire wheel. I used a hand brush first, but that didn't do much.  Here are the parts. Note all of the bushings are shot!

    Here is the soak.. Note If your threads on a bolt are pretty bad you may want to avoid this method if you plan to re-use the bolt. The vinegar can eat the threads too badly to be useable. Note mine are sticking out in this picture. They were not bad but I did not want to chance messing them up.

    For those that do not know, the acid in the vinegar dissolves the rust. The longer you leave it the more it removes. For badly rusted parts you have to be careful or the part will dissolve away. Of coarse if it's that bad you should probably find a replacement. Here are the parts I did with the wire wheel ...

    The bushings for the sway bar are in bad shape and I have not decided on a source for those yet. I hope the place that has the kit will also have these bushings. The site list a few different ones but none state they are for a 50 Chevy.

    I'll clean up this with a wire wheel and paint it before putting it back together.

    I am running out of time before my vacation but I shoud be able to get the parts painted before I leave as well as the cross member that holds the sway bar.