Sway bar hitting steering rack?

Just found out my larger recently installed H&R front sway bar has been rubbing and hitting the steering rack leading to loss of power steering. So now I need a new steering rack.

But wondering how to get the sway bar not to hit the steering rack instead of going back to the stock sway bar.

It's a VW CC that isn't lowered however i do have Bilstein HD shocks.

Could the end link mounting tabs on the shocks be positioned differently enough from oe shocks to rotate the sway bar into the steering rack electronics? (Think opposite of lowered VW's who's sway bar hits the axles if they don't have adjustable end links)

Wish I had the shop take a picture of where it was hitting but I was preoccupied with finding a place that can replace the steering rack since they said they can't... something about needing a special tool (that isn't vsgcom) to code it to the cars security that only the dealer has.

Was able to get a picture of where it hits.

Also checked with H&R... although the CC and GTI have different front sway bar part numbers... internally with H&R it's the same exact part so they say shouldn't have any clearance issues.

Any ideas of what went wrong?

http://i276.photobucket.com/albums/kk24/wildpanda86/image1.jpg

Finally got the car back with a new steering rack, new end links, and the oem sway bar installed.

They said the oem bar and the H&R bar are shaped the same except when mounted the H&R bar rotates into the steering bits kinda like a teeter toter.

What it looks like is that the H&R bar has the end link connection area shaped to accomidate cars that are lowered so that at a lowered ride height the sway bar doesn't rotate into the axle. This makes sense since my past GTI had the same sway bar setup however was lowered so nothing hit or clunked.

To keep this from happening with the H&R sway bar either I need to lower the CC or get adjustable endlinks if I want to stay stock height.

So simply with any suspension modifications it's a good idea to preemptively get adjustable endlinks to avoid causing costly damage such as the steering rack.

That's for filling us in on the cause & fix. Have you contacted H&R about this? It's worth a try, their bar cost you a lot of money to repair the damage it caused.

1ashchuckton said:

That's for filling us in on the cause & fix. Have you contacted H&R about this? It's worth a try, their bar cost you a lot of money to repair the damage it caused.

Click to expand...

All they said is that it clears. I bet their test car already had an H&R drop.

I bet you are right about that.