Should You Remove The Sway Bars From A Truck?

Sway bars, or more correctly, anti-sway bars are an integral part of any vehicle – they reduce the intensity of a body roll, hence lessening the chance of it actually flipping over during sudden turns.

Now you might think, why would a respectable pickup truck owner want to remove this crucial, so to speak, part from their vehicle? Well, it’s simply because there are times where doing so can actually be beneficial.

When this makes sense to do

Most of the time, the reason why people end up considering removing such part of the existing suspension system is to be able to do some off-road properly.

For example, when you take out the front sway bar, the wheels will end up having more travel, which is only helpful when you’re trying to traverse through rocks, uneven ground, hills and things of that nature.

This can be dangerous

In short, the only time that removing either of the sway bars could be done safely is when driving at slow, controlled speeds, that is, more or less off-road.

Certainly, there are people who have removed the front sway bar on their trucks and tell that they don’t have much body roll or whatever even at highway speeds, but guess what – that is not always the case, besides, why would you want to risk your safety just because of somebody’s results?

What if some animal, car jumps in front and you have to act quick with the steering wheel, especially so when towing a load? There is a reason why they come on all of the vehicles, so we have to respect that.

Driving with a sway bar removed could potentially be not as bad if your pickup had its suspension system upgraded. The reason why is because normally it also means it’s now more rigid, therefore even without an anti-sway bar or two the pickup may behave rather stable, though again, you have to be careful when it comes to this topic.

A tip

If you indeed consider taking out the sway bar for the off-road purposes, consider installing some quick disconnects. It makes it easy to engage and disengage the anti-sway system with the pull of a pin.

In conclusion

Sway bar removal is one of the go-to things you can do on your own pickup truck to make it so much more versatile on those technical off-road sections, but when it comes to doing the same for the purpose of driving on the road, you should not really go for it.