So yesterday I was under my car working on my exhaust when I looked forward and saw this:

Click to view attachment

I am going to add a sway bar so I was thrilled to find out I already had them but I'm wondering why I do? The car is a 72 and there's no evidence of damage in the past that would have made replacing both lower control arms necessary. It also does not have holes as if it had a sway bar and somebody removed it.Tabs are factory welded.

Anybody else run into this?

Not sure why the pic is upside down but you get the idea.

My 73 was originally a 1.7 therefore no factory sway bars. My front trailing arm already had the U tabs. It made the installation of the swaybar somewhat easier.

Ditto the same for my 73.

However, is that a hole in your A-arm?

Yes, that is a hole in his A arm. They all have them, it's the end of the welded bar that gussets the arm.

Learn something every day here!

My 76 has the tabs welded in from the factory. Also made installing the bar much easier. Maybe they gave the young welders somethin to practice on, a big crate of lower control arms with tabs periodically refilled...

Probably easier to just make more than you need with tabs than to figure out the exact number and make only those.

--DD

Dave
I hadn't considered the fact that you might have been able to order a sway bar as an option. I knew LE's had them but I thought those were the only cars that came with a sway bar as standard equipment. Did 6's have them? Did "later" cars have them standard? If they were optional for other years any idea how much they cost?

My 73 had tabs, and yes adding the bar was easy.

Starting in 75 the U tabs were deleted. However when the 76 production run started, they used all the parts they could find on the shelf. Most 75-76's did not have them.

saw this?

They were standard on the 73 2.0 (with a few exceptions). Optional on all other 73+ 914s. Not sure on the earlier ones, nor on the Sixes.

--DD

My 76 had factory a-arm tabs but no factory sway bar. I added H&H bars, front and rear, many years ago. The front sway bar drop links bolted up directly to the tabs. Very nice handling improvement.