2001 Pontiac Trans Am Suspension Upgrade - Suspension Intervention

The new mounting bushings are prelubed with the provided clear gunk, and placed on the bar along with the stock U-brackets. The antiroll bar is put up into place (it's heavier than the stock bar, thanks to its solid construction, so use an assistant or trans jack), and the mounting bolts are started by hand. Use a wrench to make them snug, but you may want to leave them a little loose to allow easier adjustments while putting in the end links.

Installing the end links will likely require two people, as the poly bushings are so stiff it's difficult to compress them enough to get the nut on the top of the through bolt. Note how we are simultaneously pushing up with the claw of a hammer to compress the bottom bushing, pulling down on the antiroll bar to compress the two intermediate bushings, and using yet another hand to get the nut started. These should not be fully tightened until the vehicle is on the ground and the suspension is loaded (to prevent binding). Also note that these are installed dry.

The 13mm antiroll bar mounting bolts then get 41 lb-ft of torque. After reinstalling the driver-side bracket and alternator splash shield (here we are replacing the factory star washer that secures it to the frame), we're done up front.

Moving now to the rear of the car, we find a bone-stock WS-6 suspension, ready to be upgraded. It's best to install each new BMR part one at a time, as keeping most components connected at any given moment keeps the rear-axle assembly from shifting too far out of place. First up is the Panhard rod and support. After cutting the tie wraps holding our exhaust cutout wiring and e-brake cable to the rod, one bolt at either end gets the Panhard rod out. The nuts are 18mm and the bolt heads are a metric size we didn't have handy (21mm, apparently), but a 13/16-inch happens to work perfectly.

The Panhard rod support is next. The mounting bolt on the passenger side is difficult to remove, and you will have to tug slightly on the coil spring to obtain enough clearance to get it out. In addition to the three 15mm bolts holding the support to the frame on the driver side, there are two small bolts holding the fuel-tank heat shield to the support. These 7mm bolts cannot be reused, so be sure to secure these points of the heat shield with tie wraps later on.

Check out the shape of the stock Panhard-rod support (middle of photo). Although it has a slight recess where the exhaust passes over, we found it inadequate on our application, and had to rig up the rubber isolation system you see to quell exhaust rattle. Thanks in part to it bolting to a lower point on the frame, the BMR unit (top) provides much more clearance--enough for dual 3-inch exhausts! At the bottom of the photo, the BMR Panhard rod must be adjusted roughly to the length of the stock one for now. An easy way to do this is to place the new rod atop the old one and turn the gold, chrome-moly custom adjuster until the mounting bolts can pass through both. Once this is done, temporarily tighten the jam nuts.

The Panhard-rod support goes up with the three stock bolts holding it loosely on the driver side. On the passenger side, the BMR kit's mounting bracket goes up, and the end of the support now goes into the factory hole where the Panhard rod used to be (with a spacer going into the top hole). Though BMR supplied new bolts for these upper holes, they would not fit through the existing holes in the frame, so we reused the two stock bolts and nuts after verifying they were of the same 10.9 grade. The bolts must install from the front. (GM made their shanks and the forward holes in the frame larger in diameter to prevent backward installation.)

Before fully tightening the Panhard support bolts, we lube the outer surfaces of the Panhard rod's bushings and install it. The driver side must reuse the stock bolt, but we were able to use the included BMR bolt from the Panhard relocation kit on the passenger side. The bolts are left a little loose for now, per BMR instructions. Check out the added exhaust clearance. After taking this photo, we lowered the car to the ground and fully tightened the nut sides to 55 lb-ft. Then, looking up under the car at the bumpstops, we measured the side-to-side wheel location. A few turns on the adjuster centered the axle, and the jam nuts were tightened-this time with threadlocker.

Back in the air, the stock rear antiroll bar (which, according to BMR, is hollow and 19mm in diameter on the WS-6) is disconnected at the end links via a 13mm wrench and socket. As with the front end links, these will be corroded and are OK to break. The exhaust-clamp-style mounts to the rear axle will be rusty, too--but they're being reused, so to avoid having to buy new ones, spray lots of penetrant first and let it soak. We were actually shocked at how easily ours came off using this technique, and how seemingly loose they were!