Godspeed swaybars
 

Welp, after finding no REAL negative feedback on the intarwebz regarding the company, I went ahead and bought a set of swaybars on eBay for ~$120, shipped. I figure at that price, even if they're made out of toilet paper tubes, I haven't lost much. They're 22mm/18mm, come with urethane bushings, etc...pretty standard stuff. They're going on an otherwise stock suspension (wheels/tires have already been upgraded), as I want to keep the OEM ride height and ride quality for now. Haven't got them yet, but will update when I do in a few days.

Meh it's basic china/Taiwan stuff. Quality is hit and miss (welds normally look like shit but a grinder can fix that). I mean its a metal bar how badly could they have fucked it up?

My front ones bent after about 6 months.

That's pretty much my thought at this point. It's under the car, so I don't care about the welds looking perfect. Function first, for me...at least when it comes to suspension and such.





Was there a curb involved...? lol I've never seen a swaybar bend from normal use...

I'm running a megan rear sway bar i scored for 40 shipped brand new on ebay. works perfect. godspeed was my next option.

Do you consider Mugen or Tomei stuff "hit and miss?" Take a guess what country much of their stuff is made.

I'm not sure where godspeed has their stuff made, or what material they use. Although I know that most reputable brands use chromoly for sway bars which has higher tensile and yield strength than your lower grade steels that may bend without springing back to shape. I dont think godspeed uses chromoly steel.

Actually, they claim they are chromoly. From the eBay vendor auction:


FRONT SWAY BAR:

• 22mm solid chromoly front sway bar
• Performance urethane sway bar bushing
• 40% stiffer than OEM/stock = dramatically improves handling by reducing understeer
• Perfect for auto-cross & race use.
• 100% direct bolt on, OEM location
• No adjustment needed
• Lifetime warranty

REAR SWAY BAR:

• 18mm solid chromoly rear sway bar
• Performance sway bar bushing
• 40% stiffer than OEM/stock = dramatically improves handling by reducing understeer
• Perfect for auto-cross & race use.
• 100% direct bolt on, OEM location
• No adjustament needed
• Lifetime warranty

For @120 bucks, shipped, if they bolt on without any modifications needed, I'll consider that a win. They are sized correctly to keep the overall balance about the same, and they're moderately sized so that they should still work well with OEM spring/shock rates. That's assuming they don't turn into Twizzlers...

China/Taiwan/Vietnam/Korea etc. are all capable of high quality manufacturing. They are among the newest industrialized economies in the world, and combined with their investment in manufacturing equipment, they can make things to rival the best German/Swiss products for less money and using newer machinery. The reason they are still hit-or-miss is a cultural one, but if you have the right relationship, they can be reliable.

:iono: Give it a shot, I guess. Lifetime warranty is good.

I really wanted a matched set for the FR-S...they're already a little more tail happy than the BRZ due to the different spring rates, so adding just a bigger rear bar would have me going off the road backwards all the time... LOL

Lifetime warranty is only as good as the company offering it.

I don't know anything about this company but it is up to the consumer to make their own decision in that regard.

On a side note, what good is a lifetime warranty on a shit part? Even if they replace it, it will be with the same shit part. Again not saying the specific part in this thread is shit, just sayin

Agreed.

Last time I checked my iPhone was made in China. I get that a lot of cheaply designed and produced stuff also comes out of these places but I wouldnt write off everything people.

While they're not known for putting out "quality" products, godspeed has been around for quite a while and don't look like they'll be going out of business any time soon. So at least its got that going for it. Worse come to worse and it breaks, get it replaced under warranty then dump it on ebay for the next sucker. lol

Godspeed coilovers are pretty fast on the track.

I've never bought from Godspeed before so I have nothing firsthand to base this on, but going from feedback on other forums, it seems like everyone is really overestimating the capacity for failure for these parts. Maybe a hole is tighter than it should be; bfd - I have drills. And I've had to do the same thing with parts from Koni, Bilstein, Neuspeed, Tectonics, Eibach, etc. If the bar is bent wrong, I simply send it back for either replacement or refund, using the OEM one as proof. Case closed. Material choice is another potential issue, but if it's chromoly like they claim it is, I'm not too worried. This forum has some real issues with certain brands for no apparent good reason, simply based on internet folklore. Spinning Sushi is the only one who seems to have any experience at all with them, and even his reported issues are rather strange sounding. Maybe I'll be proven wrong, maybe not. It's just $120 bucks - maybe I should've bought something totally useless like JDM exhaust tips..? lol

what I meant with basic Taiwan stuff was generic low quality control stuff. If you think the facility that produces runs for tomei runs the same QC as one doing it for generic ebay brand #5124 then you are mistaken. That's what I meant with basic Taiwan shit, not that anything made there is shit :)


hopefully it is clearer now.

Mine was from a pot hole and my old replica wheels didn't bend but the sway bar did.

If you are willing to sacrifice significant quality in design, materials, and tolerances... in favor of 50% off pricing, Godspeed does make functional parts.

Just understand that there is value in certified materials, weld/finish quality, engineer effort (FEA, material selection, design for 6-sigma, packaging, etc), and technician effort (fair wages/hours, quality control, hazardous materials and work environments).

I've seen plenty of their parts in-person, and it's hit-and-miss. I'd rather support companies that invest in quality (as mentioned in my signature). You don't always need Raceseng & Penske parts... but guys like Grimmspeed make cost-effective and quality parts.

In the sway bar market, I'm a fanboy for Eibach, RCE, Whiteline, Cusco, Perrin, Hotchkis, Strano, and TRD. Among them, you should be able to find something that fits your goals.

Well, none of the brands I usually use (see prior list) can offer even a single bar for the delivered price of this set. They are the exact size I want, and they're so stupid-low in price that even if they lose their temper after a year or whatever, I'm still only out 120 bucks. Like I said earlier, you can't even by a set of flipping exhaust tips for that. If that does happen (which I think is probably pretty weak odds...), then I just buy a better set in the same size (18/22) and chalk it up. I'm not a Saudi Prince, but at the same time, 120 dollars isn't going to force me into bankruptcy. And that's even if the company doesn't warranty them.

And besides, they've already shipped and should be here in a few days...lol.

So you're saying a pothole big enough to cycle your suspension through it's entire stroke but not even bend a wheel, let alone damage something else, is what bent the bar? That's pretty incredible, if so.

Keep in mind, this is a sway bar, not a supercharger kit, not a dyno tested set of headers, not a track-tuned set of shocks...they're a pair of bent metal rods that are even likely copies of another brand. Assuming the material used is adequate (and it IS chromoly), it's pretty goddamned difficult to fuck up a swaybar; you literally need to make sure it's bent right , the two holes are drilled reasonable accurately, and the paint doesn't fall off. Maybe they ARE made of butter; I just think the odds are that they aren't. We'll find out shortly!

It's a solid bar. I wouldn't worry. I would have gotten a used sti rear bar to save some money.

Please update us with a review on the fit/performance when you get the chance.

I have seen all of those things gone wrong on swaybars from multiple brands over the last 12 years. :lol:

No first hand experience with Godspeed, though. Good luck.

- Andrew

Well, they're s'posed to show up on Tuesday, so we'll see how bad they are. lol

I don't have their sway bars. But I did have a set of their coil overs. They worked well enough for what I bought them for. Which was slamming the car and driving around on the streets. They were fairly comfortable, and honestly, I thought they did better than the set of FA500's I replaced them with, in terms of comfort at least.

Would I buy those coils again? Maybe, but at the same-ish price point, there are still tons of other options from more reputable companies. So, of course my situation is/was a bit different from yours. However, the coils seemed like a quality piece, and now having first hand experience with the company, I'd be comfortable buying from them again.

I run a godspeed 18mm rear swaybar. Finish isn't great, welds are decent and there was a piece of welding rod protruding from one of the welds on the centering ring. However it seems to do its job just fine without any issues. Made a positive difference for my purposes when drifting.

I know it sounds hard to believe but all the conditions were met and it bent the bar

This was a godspeed sway bar? If so, did they replace it under the lifetime warranty?

How is it so hard to believe that someone bought the absolute cheapest part on the market and that part bent when put to the test? Of course the Godspeed swaybar bent- it's cheap AF.

If you buy these swaybars just know they are cheap, not well made, the welds will be sub-par and the metal it's made from will be from a bin/lot that was the cheapest they could find. Will it work? Sure. Will it work well? Roll the dice and see.

I don't mind using el-cheapo crap for some stuff, but when it comes to suspensiojn I won't. On my last car I had a J2 Engineering exhaust (exhaust is not exactly mission critical and a failure won't kill me) and it turned out I had go over a few welds after they cracked. But it was plenty good enough. On my wife's car I have an el-cheapo intake, but the design is good, the heat shield seals off the engine and I used an old Injen filter instead of the el-crappo generic filter it came with.

Just know your enemy and be smart.

They work just fine.

Well, they've arrived. We'll see just how horrible they are when I get home tonight. lol

So, I gave them a once-over yesterday after I got home. They're about what I expected; the paint is a bit thin, the welds are trade school quality at best, and the bar has a few gaffs in it where the bending equipment was clamped onto it. But TBH, I couldn't care less as long as they do what they're supposed to do. They're no worse looking than any of the other OEM suspension parts under the car, and since I DD my car year-round in the rust belt, paying lots of money for some suspension eye candy is kind of stupid. I might rattle can them with another layer of paint just to give them a little more protection, but honestly, it's not going to make a huge difference. I've had top-tier aftermarket suspension components on other cars, and they still look like shit after 2 winters, so worrying about looks is pretty pointless. Function first, for me.


Hopefully I'll get time to install them this weekend.

That's about as far away from the truth as you can be on the Tomei statement. I can't tell you any more, but I'll just leave you to ponder what you just wrote.

But, to add some thought to yours: what Tomei product? Don't answer this. Different product have different sources.

I installed the swaybars this weekend. Car is totalled.

Well godspeed on your next endeavor.

Man - must be too early in the morning for sarcasm. The car is fine. Swaybar install went pretty much without a hitch except for the front one, which needed the holes enlarged...looked like they were drilled for 10mm bolts instead of 12mm. I'd rather them be too small than too big... Car rides nice - the new bars make a subtle but definitely noticeable difference. As far as I'm concerned, the suspension is done, in terms of modifications. Might do a Wilwood brake upgrade at a later date when it comes time to do service work, but I'm quite pleased with this little project. Certainly worth the 120 bucks spent, that's for sure.


Another thing I was actually quite happy with is that the bars came with rubber bushings, not the urethane that were advertised. I much prefer rubber for NVH and durability reasons.

So the bushings are rubber but listed as urethane. It would not be surprising that they used mild steel to make the bars but listed them as chromoly. But hey, $120 lol.

You say that like rubber is a downgrade...lol. More expensive, better nvh, lasts longer....that all adds up to win in my book.

So, swaybar update... With temps in the low 30's in the morning, the bushings have begin to squeak when going over speedbumps.. I'm wondering if the bushings really are urethane, as I don't ever recall rubber ones squeaking...they seemed awfully soft when I got them, which is why I thought they were rubber (and they were black and didn't have that glossy urethane look)... I'll probably just try some spray silicone lube and hope that it wicks in, but I'll likely have to disassemble and lube to do it right.