Repaired Rubicon Electronic Sway Bar Disconnect
My Jeep’s AAM Smart Bar (SB) feature hasn’t been functioning for the last few months. In fact, it caused the Jeep to throw a check engine light. Because of this I completely removed the sway bar from the jeep and used a Pro Cal to disable the “SWAY BAR” dash light.
After cleaning the electrical connections and easily accessible internals, I found that the connection between the harness and the electric motor were badly fried; cleaning and greasing everything wouldn’t solve the problem this time around.
Because new ones are so expensive, I had resolved to go without it until we could possibly find a replacement from a wreck… Until the latest SJC camping weekend, where I had the rooftop tent back on the jeep and the driving was tipsier than usual. I caved and bought a mechanism to convert the SB to manual operation from Double Black Off-Road (DBOR).
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http://www.doubleblackoffroad.com/je...dle---JK.aspx#
EVO Manufacturing also makes one, but I decided on DBOR’s because the steel handle on the EVO apparently becomes as rusty as anything else under the jeep, and I liked the engraved directional instruction.
Anyhow, it arrived yesterday and looked to be the simplest installation ever. But my SB was full of gunk and stuck in the open or unlocked position, so the normal installation was not going to be enough – I had to completely disassemble and clean the more significant section of the housing’s internals.
I’ve now got everything working (Manually). To do it you’ll need:
- Spanner, preferably a ratcheting wrench
- 14mm socket
- Breaker bar (I did, anyway)
- Bench Vise (if possible)
- Grease
- Rags or shop towels
- Preferred cleaning tools and products
- Hand cleaner (Dish soap won’t cut all the grease)
As mentioned earlier, I began with the sway bar removed from the Jeep, and the electric motor removed from it. I can post those steps in a later comment if necessary.
1) Remove the bolt that connects the housing to a frame mount first – It prevents you from accessing a couple bolts in the next step. Fortunately every bolt involved in this process requires the same 14mm socket. The bolts on mine were seized enough that I needed a breaker bar. With my disconnect mechanism stuck in the unlocked position, the housing spun 360 around the bar – This is where the vise would be very helpful.
Without a vise handy, I jammed the housing under a tire to keep it still.
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2) Remove the 5 bolts holding the two halves of the housing together.
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3) The two halves can now be easily separated by pulling them apart, revealing the mess inside. Be careful with the cardboard gasket pressed between the two sides. The moveable gears will pop out if you align the electric motor to the backside and push the pin into the hole it usually occupies.
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4) Clean All The Things! Using rags or paper towels, sponges and maybe a wire brush, clean each half of the housing, and the spring, carrier and cog as well as you can. Mine were so badly corroded they still look rough.
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5) Regrease everything, and put the carrier, cog, spring and paper filter back in place. Use as much grease as you can.
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6) Test Fit. Align both sides of the gears and the housing and squeeze everything together, Fastening the housing with 2 or 3 bolts. Then attach the DBOR manual disconnect handle with the 3 bolts that originally held the electric motor in place. You can now test the operation of the handle; if it doesn’t lock & unlock the sway bar position, you’ll need to disassemble and take more drastic measures. If it works, Success!! You can continue to reassemble things.
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7) Reattach the remaining housing bolts and tighten everything up.
The now manually-operated Smart Bar can be mounted on the Jeep once again.
Everything is back on my Jeep and I’m looking forward to using it on the next SJC outing. DBOR’s replacement part really is dead simple – At this point my only thoughts on it are that DBOR should’ve included a gasket to fit between their part and the rest of the SB, and that since the rest of the mechanism remains the same, I’ll probably have to continue cleaning it on a yearly basis.
Hope this comes in handy!
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