Rumor is that a
Panhard bar and the stock style rubber bushing
upper control arms are not happy working together. Since the
Panhard bar is supposed to relieve some of the sideways load that causes the
upper control arms to bind, I find this questionable. Has anyone heard any pro or con to this rumor?
They're not entirely happy working together, because the upper arms define one roll center and the
panhard bar defines a different one several inches lower. But here's the critical thing:
There can be only one roll center. So there
will be only one roll center, and that will be the one defined by the
panhard bar. It will come at the expense of extra stress on the upper torque boxes and control arm bushings as they are forced into compliance with a roll center outside their geometric scope, and it will result in non-linear cornering behavior (snap oversteer) as they reach the limits of their compliance. But it'll be better than not having a
panhard bar at all IMHO.
As a sidebar, this is exactly why the "poor man's 3-link" or PM3L came into being. Having only one upper link remaining instead of two converging links sharply reduces the binding and stress caused by the conflicting roll center definitions, and frees the remaining link to focus its existence on controlling axle housing rotation and nothing more, which it's free to do because it's no longer part of the roll center and side loading equations. And that's the paradox: When coupled with a
panhard bar, the one upper link is actually more durable, with less potential for damage and with better handling characteristics, than keeping two converging links.
So, back to the
panhard bar with the stock uppers...the increased stability and predictability the
panhard bar provides when added to stock uppers is a fair tradeoff IMHO. Ideally the uppers need to be removed altogether and replaced with a torque arm, 3-link, or "5-link", but short of that, adding a PHB and keeping the stock uppers is a better solution than anything you can try to do to the 4-link without a
panhard bar. Just don't try to add stiffness to the upper bushings at the same time, like the poor sap here in phoenix who took some bad advice and put a
panhard bar on his car where all 8 of the control arm pickup points were spherical bearings and wondered why the rear end hopped and skipped in hard corners. It might have had something to do with the fact that all the
suspension compliance at that point was coming from the sheetmetal