Jeep CJ-7 Swaybar Bracket Upgrade

When Stock Beats Aftermarket

Project CJ-7 Swaybar

Project Jeep CJ-7 Daystar Swaybar Bushings Tip.  When swapping out your stock CJ swaybar bushings with the Daystar Swaybar Bushings, here’s a Tip – Use the CJ bracket!  Here’s why…

First off, upgrading your sway bar bushings from the old stock rubber bushings to newer polyurethane bushings is a good idea.  Generally, the old rubber is worn out and soft, offering little effective anti-sway on the road.  But if you own a CJ and you are about to or have already replaced the old bushings with the Daystar replacement, then you might want to read this tip.

When the project CJ-7 was built, the factory swaybar bushings were replaced before the Jeep ever hit the trails.  After a couple of years of offroading in my CJ-7 I was doing one of my post wheeling once over inspections to look for any issues that might have popped up during the last trip.  Looking at the Daystar swaybar bushing, I saw to my surprise, that the bushing brackets had warped and bent.  This past trip prior finding this, I had driven a little with the swaybar connected.  Nothing radical, just some cruising on the rough roads near a lot of cabins, roads that average cars can navigate easily.


I figured I could take a hammer to them and flatten them out again, but chances are they would just bend again.  I knew I had the original brackets still hanging in the garage (I never throw away anything, thus the clutter).  Closer inspection of the factory CJ-7 brackets, I realized that the CJ’s brackets were thicker material.  Putting a micrometer to each bracket, I got .11 inch on the Daystar bracket and .16 inch on the stock CJ-7 bracket.  Additionally, the Daystar bracket had an oblong hole on both sides, where as the CJ had a smaller oblong hole on just one site and a single circle hole on the other.  Obviously the Daystar is oblong to accommodate a variety of dimensions but the holes had apparently made the bracket just that much more weaker.

Daystar bracket – .118 inch

CJ bracket – .161 inch

So, to get to the point and the tip I used the CJ-7 swaybar bracket along with the Daystar polyurethane bushing.  I’m much more confident that the CJ brackets can withstand a little pounding as where the daystar brackets just couldn’t take it.  It’s a good thing I kept the old parts.

Daystar swaybar bracket

Cj-7 swaybar bracket
with polyurethane bushing.

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