The tone and content of your post makes me think that you and some others are speculating from meager or no experience. At age 14 I learned to drive a rear drive car that had neither front nor rear sway bars. Later I extensively drove another rear drive car that my Dad bought that also had neither front nor rear sway bars. I have owned 5 rear drive cars with neither front nor rear sway bars and have driven countless other without sway bars.
I used to powerslide my Dad’s early 1950s car (w/o sway bars) on gravel road curves near our house. If my Dad knew that… The car handled beautifully in this situation; was entirely predictable. My friends in the passenger and back seats were not afraid to ride with me.
Since none of your local yards have one you might do a net search for Wilson Salvage on South Shields in Oklahoma City, OK. They are a Ford only salvage, ship UPS, and I’ve never had a problem dealing with them.
It’s odd that the bar broke there so my feeling is that it was stressed due to ? and simply gave up.
I have to respectfully disagree with the aircraft analogy. Planes have been suffering airframe metal fatigue and falling out of the sky for decades (50s era British Comets to modern F-15s) but you’re dealing with brittle aluminum on aircraft; not spring or high carbon steel.
Every time you hit a bump or lean the car into a turn there are twisting forces on the sway bar just like there are on a torsion bar and like torsion bars they sometimes break.
Well, my '71 Chevelle has a factory installed front sway bar. Some of the earlier high performance SS versions also had rear bars.
You have to be careful when you say it won’t be noticed. Some vehicles are absolutely scary without it. For example, disconnect the sway bar on a Jeep Wrangler and go for a road spin. Commonly done off-roading to improve wheel travel for rock crawling but if you forget to re-connect it- it won’t take long to realize your mistake. Hope you have an extra pair of depends along!
Some cars have pronounced body roll without the bar attached, some you’d be hard pressed to know it…
Thanks for all the great replies. Some excellent points have been made. On the one side it doesn’t seem so serious considering they use to be optional features and some Mustangs don’t even have them on the V6 models. On the other side, the emergency maneuvers and the kid darting out in front of me aguments where the sway bar may play a critical role have convinced me to call my mechanic and have him order the sway bar from Ford. I guess better to be safe than sorry. If anything I guess I’ve purchased some peace of mind. Thanks again.
Thank you for the follow up. I think you’ve made the right decision. I’d suggest a Google for an aftermarket bar, however. You’ll probably save a hundred bucks or more over a dealer supplied bar and it’ll be just as good.
Yes, aluminum air frame suffer from fatigue. I was referring to a titanium engine fan disk that cracked by a flaw as large as a grain of sand during manufacturing and eventually split in two midflight, with scattering debris taking out flight control.
Titanium, like steel on a sway bar, have implied infinite life as long as they don’t experience too much stress. But a crack would introduce extra stress. Who knows what happened to the Mustang sway bar? Maybe someone put a torch to it and weakened it. Maybe it was hit by a stone on the road and chipped.
The important thing is to either get that replaced or learn to drive w/o it.