Adjustable Panhard Bar recommendation- 2014 GT

So I had a giant pothole incident (on Father’s Day) while avoiding being T-Boned by a Red-Light running punk in a Civic. I hit the biggest pothole short of the Grand Canyon, and my car hit so hard, I thought for sure I did serious damage. Took the car in and got it aligned. We found no witness marks on anything.

Becoming hyper-focused on things, I noticed that my left rear tire seemed to be poking out from under the fender slightly (1/16” on the vertical plane) and the right rear was tucked in almost an inch. I don’t know if the brackets for the Panhard bar got bent, or if’s always been that way, and now I’m seeing due to being so focused on finding any damage.

That being said, I’m now looking for a suitable Panhard bar (adjustable) to bring things back to center. I also found one site that sells a Panhard Bar Brace. Do I need that too?

There seems to be a fairly large selection and the price variance is wide. The Ford Racing bar is over $200, and some others I’ve see at AM only cost about $130. Is it worth buying the expensive models over the cheaper?

This is a daily driver. Never tracked but driven like it is at times. The car is fairly stout, and makes a lot more HP than it needs to.

That’s it, what do you guys recommend?

Check the axle tubes and control arm mounts for straightness and check the square first.

I have the steeda panhard bar and brace. Lots of people don't believe the brace does much of anything (corner carving guys) but they aren't shocking the rear frame like us drag guys do.
I can't see a reason to spend big dollars on one adjustable panhard bar over another. I've had the steeda one on my car since 2011 and the rear end still sits square.

Edits: too drunk to spell with my big fingers and little phone, LOL

I bought a Whiteline but I did all Whiteline front to back' good quality.
il
Whiteline Mustang Adjustable Panhard Bar KPR068 (05-14 All) (americanmuscle.com)

$135

BMR adjustable and no on the brace.

I have a J&M adjustable Panhard Bar and Upper Brace. They're both solid pieces and work well, not too expensive either.

RED09GT said:

Check the axle tubes and control arm mounts for straightness and check the square first.

I have the steeda panhard bar and brace. Lots of people don't believe the brace does much of anything (corner carving guys) but they aren't shocking the rear frame like us drag guys do.

I can't see a reason to spend big dollars on one adjustable panhard bar over another. I've had the steeda one on my car since 2011 and the rear end still sits square.

Edits: too drunk to spell with my big fingers and little phone, LOL

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I’m not exactly sure how to check the straightness other than visually. You mentioned checking the square. I ASSum you mean I should use a square to check the straightness, and right angles (especially the tubes) to be sure they’re undisturbed.

I found a shop locally that does frame work. I’m kicking around the idea of heading over there to see how much they would charge to make sure nothing is damaged and out of whack, but it will require an appointment and what ever they would charge. I tried but failed to get pricing of there services over the phone. The only person I could talk to was their Girl-Friday and she couldn’t give me any info other that telling mr I need to book an appointment.

So it seems I can’t really go wrong (other than paying too much) regardless of brand. Good to know … I’m still scratching my head on the PHB brace. I have no way to get under there myself, at the moment. Ford was accommodating enough to let me go I to the shop area, and have a quick look for myself. I was looking for obvious damage at the time, and didn’t notice the wheel offset, so I didn’t even think about the rear axle being off center until after I got home and parked.

The alignment tech. I didn’t get to talk to, but he said it was easily set to specs, and relayed to me that if anything were damaged, the alignment would have been substantially off. It was barely out of spec. and alignment could have bee skipped at this time. Since I went that far, I just told them to eliminate the “slightly out of spec” condition.

Tomorrow I’ll post an image of the alignment spec sheet they gave me. Perhaps that will point to something that I don’t recognize as being a problem, but actually is.

Thanks to everyone for the quick feedback. I appreciate the help/advice.

I have the BMR on car adjustable Panhard bar and my sting is lowered. The Panhard bar strikes the stock brace when I hit bumps so the BMR brace is on order.

I installed the BMR on car adjustable PHB..and mating brace. The BMR PHB is made from DOM, and the adjustable portion is made from chromolly. Adjustable portion is on the pass side, but inboard several inches. Done that way to make it dead easy to adjust. The FRPP version is a dead loss. Requires narrow, open end flat wrenches, since it's at the extreme end of their phb.

The BMR PHB brace is superb, made from rectangular dom tubing. The oem phb brace is junk, it's just paper thin folded sheet metal. My grandkids wrapped the damned thing around my apple tree....twice, with zero effort involved.

The oem PHB's are either filled with sand, or lead shot. Cut one end off, and you will see for urself, it pours out.

I'm lowered 1.25" on the rear. I could slither underneath and adjust the BMR phb, while an assistant got it eyeballed correctly. They all have to be adjusted with suspension fully loaded. You can not tweak em on a 2 post lift, with rear wheels dangling down.

https://www.bmrsuspension.com/?page=products&productid=172&superpro=0

https://www.bmrsuspension.com/?page=products&productid=173&superpro=0

I'm picturing a right-rear wheel/tire hit (sort of like a curb strike) being what happened.

First thing I'd look at would be the pedestal on the passenger side that the PHB and its brace tie in to. See if it's bent toward the driver side at all. Then look to see if the PHB brace is bent or has slid, which would also allow axle positioning to shift toward the driver side.

In a RR hit, the PHB is put in tension, so it should not have bent. But the PHB force at the pedestal will try to bend the pedestal and buckle the brace (because the brace would be in compression under that condition).

If the pedestal is bent, a new brace may not fit properly.


As far as rear toes are concerned, it takes more than a half inch of lateral axle shift to change them much - the LCAs are basically parallel to the vehicle centerline, making the axle the fourth side of a parallelogram.


Norm

Midlife Crises said:

I have the BMR on car adjustable Panhard bar and my sting is lowered. The Panhard bar strikes the stock brace when I hit bumps so the BMR brace is on order.

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BMR it is then, I ordered both parts just so it won’t be in the back of my mind.

Pentalab said:

The BMR PHB brace is superb, made from rectangular dom tubing. The oem phb brace is junk, it's just paper thin folded sheet metal. My grandkids wrapped the damned thing around my apple tree....twice, with zero effort involved.

https://www.bmrsuspension.com/?page=products&productid=172&superpro=0

https://www.bmrsuspension.com/?page=products&productid=173&superpro=0

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Thanks, I ordered them from AM. The owe me some money in store credits, and that just about covered the cost.

Norm Peterson said:

I'm picturing a right-rear wheel/tire hit (sort of like a curb strike) being what happened.

First thing I'd look at would be the pedestal on the passenger side that the PHB and its brace tie in to. See if it's bent toward the driver side at all. Then look to see if the PHB brace is bent or has slid, which would also allow axle positioning to shift toward the driver side.

In a RR hit, the PHB is put in tension, so it should not have bent. But the PHB force at the pedestal will try to bend the pedestal and buckle the brace (because the brace would be in compression under that condition).

If the pedestal is bent, a new brace may not fit properly.

As far as rear toes are concerned, it takes more than a half inch of lateral axle shift to change them much - the LCAs are basically parallel to the vehicle centerline, making the axle the fourth side of a parallelogram.

Norm

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I’ll take it to a shop and have another look. If it’s bent (pedestal) I assume the fix is for the shop to bend it back?

crjackson2134 said:

I’ll take it to a shop and have another look. If it’s bent (pedestal) I assume the fix is for the shop to bend it back?

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Yes. I'm pretty sure that it'd be a job for an experienced body-shop tech and a frame machine.


Norm

I didn’t catch wether your stang is lowered or not. If it has been dropped and has the stock Panhard bar then that is why the rear axle is not centered.

Midlife Crises said:

I didn’t catch wether your stang is lowered or not. If it has been dropped and has the stock Panhard bar then that is why the rear axle is not centered.

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No, it’s stock height. I managed to get under the car (even though it wasn’t raised) and took a lot of pics. I couldn’t see anything that looked bent/scraped/or damaged. I’m beginning to think the offset has been there all along and just went unscrutinized until now.

Attached are some of the pics…

That all looks normal to me.

Nothing jumps out in those pics.
Mine was off center at stock height too. It does not look obvious till you add wider rear wheels.

Hopefully I’ll be able to put the issue to bed this week, or no later than the next. PHB/Brace are in transit, so it’ll only be a matter of getting an appointment for the install and adjustment.

I’m going to avoid a pre-install frame alignment check, as I just can’t see any evidence other than the wheel offset. I’m guessing that if there’s something more, it will be discovered by the installer. I’ll have the shop (same Dyno-Shop that built the engine, and installed all the mods) BOLO for anything out of the ordinary.

Is there any reason to revisit the front end alignment after adjusting the rear axle centerline.

No reason to mess with FE align. There is a slim chance the steering wheel may be off center a touch, but I doubt it.

My 2010 GT auto was off in the rear end...bone stock when I bought it. Once the wider rear tires and rims went on, it was blatantly obvious. Driver's side rear stuck out 3/8". Funny thing is, once the rear was lowered 1.25", the wider rears still stuck out 3/8" on the driver's side. The BMR adjustable PHB and brace fixed all that. Several years later, the BMR PHB + brace were removed..and replaced with a whiteline watts link. Sold the PHB + brace to a local who had a new at the time, 2012 GT manual. His left rear stuck out a bunch..and he was not lowered at all.

crjackson2134 said:

Hopefully I’ll be able to put the issue to bed this week, or no later than the next. PHB/Brace are in transit, so it’ll only be a matter of getting an appointment for the install and adjustment.

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It will have to be adjusted with full rear weight on the rear tires.

Might be best to adjust the PHB on an alignment rack with the front tires on unlocked turn plates. That way, none of your adjustment will end up as lateral preload on the rear tires and the possibility of a small error in centering still occurring.


Norm