I bought a new Stillen sway bar for my '00 Max, and was planning on just forking out $40 to get the dealer to install it cause I don't have the time/tools/ability to do it myself.

So I had arranged for this to happen, and my dad (the technical owner of the car even though I paid half) said that he was having second thoughts on getting it put on. Something along the lines of this: If I get into an accident, and there's some kind of liability from the sway bar that we could get sued for, we wouldn't be able to do anything because we had modded the car.

Normally, according to my dad, we would be able to get the money back from Nissan for whatever the fault in the car may have been, but if the fault is *some how* put on the sway bar, we wouldn’t be able to get anything from Stillen…

I have absolutely no idea if he's right: or if he's just pulling this out of his a$$ ... so Input please!

 

no one has to know there is even a sway bar on the car. who is to know the rsb isnt stock? no one is going to sue you for having a sway bar on your car anyway...

if you dont put it on you can always sell it to me

 

I could understand your Dad being leary if you were going to slam that car on airbags or put hydraulics in, but a rear sway bar is not going to hurt your car. If anything, you'll notice a good improvement in the way the rear end feels. It'll feel a lot more solid, with a lot less roll. Tell your Dad not to worry, I've had mechanics at my Nissan dealership compliment my car saying "that's kool" in regards to my Stillen Front strut tower brace and my rear sway. Besides, you and your Dad, could literally install that thing in under 30 minutes blindfolded and drunk. You can always remove it if you ever needed to. Besides, not even Sherlock Holmes would solve the mystery of the rear sway bar. There is no law that prohibits anyone from adding suspension performance enhancing parts. As long as you pass emissions, your car would pass any legally mandated automobile inspection (generally speaking.) Save the $40, and spend 30 minutes of quality time with your Dad. My Dad was the same way when I wanted to do stuff to the car. Imagine having a 1987 Buick Regal Turbo T-Type in your driveway, and not being able to do anything to it but WISH. My father and I could have easily added 100HP to that car by ourselves. Good Luck.

 

tell your father not to worry. there is really no way you could be sued over a rear sway bar if you got into an accident. unless your sway bar snapped loose and went flying across the road and hit someone, THEN you would have a lawsuit on your hands. your not modifying the car in any unsafe way or anything like that, and in fact are drastically improving the stability of the rear end of the car, which stock, could cause an accident with an unexperienced driver in a sticky situation. hundreds of thousands of people have rear sway bars, cars even come with them, so you will be just fine.

on another note, i really suggest adding a FSTB or LTB to the front of the car, to compensate for the improved rear end stability.

 

sorry to be OT but what about a FSTB? could that possibly affect the way the car was designed to crumple in a front end or side colission?

 

in a front head on colision, im not sure it would make much of a difference, it would just get forced back and the car would crumple correctly. from the side, such as someone hitting your fender t-bone style, i would think the bar would either snap off the bolts or bend itself. there are cars that come stock with strut tower bars, usually higher end sports and sports-luxury coupes and sedans. unless the strut bar is one piece, like the Neuspeed one i had on my accord, i would think the bolts would just snap in a bad enough collision.

 

Ok, just to let you know, there was an org member with an 03 Maxima who's car was declared totaled after an accident. He all a number of mods done to his car - coil overs, front and rear strut, shocks, etc... Anyway, he wasn't held liable or responsible for damages because of any mods. He was paid the full amount of the cars total worth and the insurance company didn't even pay attention to the mods on his car when they went to apraise the car. I wouldn't worry too much buddy, and would tell your father to get a grip

 

wouldnt that be worse and possibly come inside the cabin?

 

In your defense, using a well-engineered non-OEM RSB or other performance part in the way it was meant to be used is no more dangerous and liable than installing non-OEM tires. But in your dad's defense, shady lawyers will always come up with slick ways to blame someone/something, even if it is OEM. Ford lost a $3.2 million lawsuit for not having bulletproof windows in their SUVs because some lawyer convinced a jury that it would have prevented his drunken, unbelted clients from being ejected after a rollover.

 

thats pathetic. that not only the lawyer used that as the defense, but that 12 members of the god damn jury thought that was a reasonable defense. christ, where do they find these jurors? unfortunately, i bet a good portion of them just wanted the case to end so they could get home, but i would think a "jury of my peers" would be equal to MY intelligence level, not a 7 year old drunk foreign child.

 

the only way i could see the rsb being a problem is if, and this is a BIG IF the rsb somehow snaps after a bad collision and the rsb hits someone/something.

but then, what are the chances of this ever happening, or is it even possible.......

 

Bottom Line: The RSB....nor any sort of brace will affect the performance of the vehicle negatively in an accident. Nor will it create liability issues.