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Seedy Al's guide to making an Adjustable Panhard Rod. Cheap.


Seedy Al

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Hey guys!

So I thought I would pull out another Tech Article for you, this time on how to convert your pansy gay boring pan-hard rod into adjustable, without breaking the bank.

As Always, Disclaimer, I take no responsibility for what you do with your stuff. I know this works, and have had it certed before. I can’t be responsible for the way you go about it.

Vehicle used in this is a 1981 Cressida Wagon, MX63

Anyways, that side of things is done. So to start with, I hope you have a beer in hand, and some sweet music. These are always good ideas.

So here we have it, one pan-hard rod, that is now the wrong length because you have done the right thing and slammed out your car, but now your diff is all over to one side and rubbing more than a horny school girl watching a David Hasselhoff DVD.

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So to begin, I measured the outside of the rod, assuming it is hollow in the middle (would be surprised if it wasn’t in most cases). In this case, outside was 19mm, and assumed wall thickness would be around 3mm.

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Then I went up to pick a part, and hunted around some vehicle, looking for the correct type of rear tow adjuster found on many vehicles. (pictured below is the style you ultimately want), The idea is to find one that is skinner than the original inside hollow of the pan-hard rod, so you can slip one inside the other for a bit of decent strength. (this one measured at 14.5mm, pretty close to my guesstimation)

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Rod measurement

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Next, you want to measure your pan-hard rod, end to end, so you have a base for what length you need. Write this down as it will come handy later on. (780mm in this case)

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From there, you need to figure out how much of the Pan-hard rod you need to chop out.

Firstly, I un-wound both ends of the adjusters completely out of the super larger adjuster nut section. Then I measured the length of the threaded section, and set the lock nuts to the centre, so I had decent adjustment each way (Don’t forget, that the nut takes up X of the thread, so take that into account when doing this measurement.) then I reassembled the rod till both nuts were locked to the adjuster.

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Next you need to measure out the adjuster section of the rod you have bought to use. With this one, the rod has a small lip on it, so I measured between each of those lips. (190mm here). This is the measurement you are going to be doing the welding at. So then I added 30mm each side, and cut down so I had the adjuster section at 190mm and an overall length of 250mm

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And clean up the ends so the are easy to slip in.

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Then, Find the center of the Pan-hard rod, and mark out the section you want to cut out. In theory, for this case I should be marking out 190mm. However, I already know that my rod is too long, so I in fact cut out an extra 10mm, making it 200mm. This is simply because It will centralise my pan hard rod a lot better and leave me with more tuning ability. Make sure you know which way your rod needs to go, some need to be shorter than factory, and some longer.

I used a drop saw here, however you can use a hacksaw/ grinder/ whatever really. Just try and keep it square. You will most likely end up with a pretty yuck looking cut anyway, so next step is to clean that up inside and out. Remember, tidy work is pretty work. What would your mother say if you didn’t clean up your cuts/ Room!

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Yuck

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Pretty!

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From here, you want to measure the internal diameter of the original Pan-hard rod you have cut, to find out if the outside diameter of the adjustable section will fit. Turns out mine measured at about 13.5mm, So it’s one miller meter to small in diameter to simply slip in. (cunt)

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So I then found a 15mm drill bit (14.5 would have been ideal seeing as that’s the diameter of the rod, but I only had a 15, and wasn’t going to pay for one.) then drilled out the rod as far as I needed so the adjustable section could slip all the way up to the lip.

And it should look all nice like this (also at this point, it’s a good time to clean up the areas to be welded with a wire buff or similar, so that its nice, rust free steel)

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Then, ITS PENUT BUTTER WELDING TIME! I just did a few tacks, making sure I had everything nice and straight (adjustments can be forcefully made while its tacked)

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Then once I was happy. Welded both ends of the adjuster Sections, then cleaned them up to make them pretty.

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And that is pretty much it! From there it’s just a matter of chucking it in the car (I painted mine first) and then setting it up. I did this with the back of the Car jacked up on axel stands, with the stands under the diff so that all the weight was on the springs like it would sit on the road. Once you have your centralized location. Lock the nuts and you are away laughing with no more one sided guard Rub!

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So there you have it! one adjustable Pan-hard rod, for the cost of some time and stuff all money (the rod i got from pick-a-part cost me $15)

And thats it! Congratulations, its time for more booze / skids!

From your Good cunt

Seedy Al

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  • 1 year later...

If not supposed to respond to tech articles delete me... but Mr Alan of Seediness, what type of vee-hickle has the part you scored from Pick-A-Part? Desperately need to locate one and have my friend make me one of these so I can slam and run wide steels on my newly painted gem panelvan (that had better be finished on Sunday). Skyscraper spec is not an option any longer.

Regards,

The Crazyiest if Tim's

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