Pillow Block = Sleep Block

It took over six months to get the cockpit adjustable sway bars. They are a combination of parts from Genesis Technologies as well as custom fabricated parts. The supplied pillow blocks which mount the sway bars to the chassis are beautifully machined and polished. However, they are supposed to allow the sway bar to rotate and they pinch it. In the picture to the left note that the screw holes were machined too close to the inner diameter and that the screw threads are exposed. It was suggested that I try to open them up with some 180-grit sandpaper, but that only created a flat spot on the offending thread. I'm not sure what the machinist was thinking... these are headed into the bin.

I started down the path of designing new ones when I stumbled into HRP World who manufacturers and resells Genesis Technologies parts. They offer pillow blocks for a variety of sway bar diameters, but they didn't have any with a 1⅜" ID. So I contacted them and a couple of weeks later they sent me four custom ones, two for the front and two for the rear. As you can see in the picture below, they are a lot more robust than the supplied ones. However, vertical space is tight and after contacting HRP World, I had 0.125" machined off of the top and bottom (left and right in the picture) at a local shop. In the picture below; the front one is the supplied one, the back left is as received from HRP World, and the one on the right has been machined and then hit with a metal finishing pad. The next step is to install them on the front of the monocoque.