Man these things are sexy.


All wrapped up in it's bubbly packing.

Unwrapped with it's nice shiny black coating.

Stock rear bar diameter: 0.75".

Upgraded rear: 0.875".

Both front and rear bars come with new bushings and brackets (rear is shown).

Front bars in comparison, upgraded front is 1"! (Stock front is 0.812")

The rest of the pictures are here.

Prices are being negotiated at this point so now would be a good time to tell me what you think they're worth.

 

Dang, Great job on fabbing these up. Let me know how the x handles after these ones go on.

 

I will! I'm hoping to get the rear on tomorrow and the front one later next week. Track event is in two and a half weeks.
Looks like these are going to be around $195 shipped to the lower 48 states.

 

I installed the rear sway bar yesterday and took the car for a spin. I can already notice a difference in how the car handles. I dropped the Jag off this morning to have the front sway bar done - I have no interest in dropping the front subframe.
I tried to take it here to test out the sway bar but I couldn't find a way in:


Picture of the bar installed:


FYI, if you're doing this I would recommend maybe finding some good Grade 8 bolts to replace these guys while you're doing the job:

They've got a stupid star end that makes it difficult to get good torque on them to get them on and off.

Also order new end links while you're at it, just my .02$.

 

Where did you get the sway bars?

 

Sorry for the late reply, I don't get on the internet much anymore. My 8 month old son and 6month old puppy tend to take up a lot of my time.

The deal with the sway bars is this, I had them made by a company here in the States and they said they don't want to deal with customers directly - they want all orders to go through me. However, with this being said there were some issues with the sway bar installation. The front bar had to be redesigned and they can not make the front brackets needed to make the kit work with a larger bushing. I had to have the front sway bar brackets strengthened to resist fatigue. The rear sway bar end links seem to be prone to failure also. I'm currently looking into replacement pieces for the rear. Also the rear bolts should be upgraded from an M8 size to an M10 for increased holding strength.
I did contact the company to order more sway bars and they said that considering the problems with installation they did not want to make any more. Since then another member on the board has asked about these also so if I get enough interest I will see if I can sweet talk the company into making a few more sets. Total cost for front and rear bars along with strengthened brackets and bigger rear sway bar end links will likely be around $600 before shipping.
So with all this being said it is kind of a pain to get everything to work but I feel the gain is worth it. My X is so flat through the turns now it's hard to believe it's on the stock, 127k mile comfort suspension - I don't even have the sport suspension.

 

Does anyone make strut tower braces or an XK8 or XJ8??

 

I haven't seen any listed anywhere but then again all of my research has been focused on the X-Type. Why do you need strut braces? I would imagine the car is plenty stiff and that would be overkill. You could probably contact a local fab/race shop and have one made up.

 

Well I think the XK has excellent handling and wouldn't need one, but I think the XJ can use it. It's a 2004 model and the strut tower brace will give it improved handling and not let the car flex as much as it does (especially since much of the body is aluminum). I think you are right, I will have to get one custom fabricated because I can't find one anywhere.

 

is it possible to get sway bars for the new XF?

 

Just about anything can be done if you've got the money. There are lots of companies that make aftermarket sway bars such as Eibach and Addco. If you ask around and do some googling you could probably find a company that would make some. If I had an XF (maybe in a year or two ) I'd see about getting some made if the car needed it. The reason I did the sways on the X is because I liked how the car was damped, I just didn't care for how much it swayed in the corners. The sway bars allowed the car to maintain it's awesome British ride but stick to the turns a little better.