First hand experience with Carli swaybar?

[GrantP]

I'm very interested in getting some feedback from owners who are running the Carli swaybar on their trucks. I have no doubt I will be much happier with it while off road, but I'm a little concerned about the stability at highway speeds. Is it a handful while towing at freeway speeds in a crosswind for example? I probably have more miles on my truck off road than I do on road while towing but I don't want to improve one and give up the other. FWIW, when I do tow it's probably less than 5k. Thanks for any help.

 

[seafish]

FYI--the Thuren trackbar has easily removable pins on the cross bar so that you can run with or without it within a matter of minutes.

 

[ENafziger]

I have the Carli swaybar, and I encountered no problems towing a 35' bumper pull camper for 10,300 on a trip through Canada and Alaska. I grossed ~ 21,000 lbs give or take depending on level of tanks and fuel.

Honestly, I'm not sure how much unhooking the swaybar would actually do on these trucks. The only motivation to do so would be to gain slight articulation at low speed crawl under alot of flexing. But in my experience, the control arms and other suspension geometry constrains the movement so significantly that removing the swaybar entirely gains nothing over just running the Carli bar all the time. That being said, I'm running the 2.65 Bilstein kit and Kore control arms...if you're running a long arm/radius arm kit, then potentially the sway bar will make more of an impact.

--Eric

 

[GrantP]

I have used swaybar disconnects in the past on some of my Jeeps but I don't need to go there on my truck, it would be overkill. I never really enjoyed crawling on the ground while trying to put the pins back in anyway. My main goal is to eliminate a lot the side to side rocking motion when one side hits a bump and the other doesn't, it's very tiring when you spend day after day on rough dirt roads.

Thank you for sharing your experience while towing, sounds like a non-issue.

 

[BILTIT]

No issues at all with my carli bar either, towed 7k+ through the mountains without issue. Truck feels super stable on the road.

 

[GrantP]

Was there a noticeable decrease in the side to side rocking of the truck on bumps?

 

[BILTIT]

It is a noticable change yes. It still rocks some but not the same way, i have the complete 2.5 pintop kit in my truck so the shocks probably factor in aswell.

 

[GrantP]

Well I've had the Carli swaybar on for almost a year now and agree there is no degradation in stability while towing but there is a huge difference in the ride, particularly off road. This was one of the best upgrades I have made to the truck. Absurd speeds off road are easy (with the rest of the Carli components I have) and the daily drive routine is much nicer. Thanks to all for the feedback.

 

[AHill100]

I've run the Carli sway as my first suspension mod with the stock suspension. It was a great improvement for the side to side rocking, but does not eliminate it 100%. I could not tell any diffference on the freeway. I later upgraded to the Carli 2.5" King Shock suspension and that was a significant improvement, both offroad and on the freeway.