Anyone care to run over the basic physics of the torsion bar and how it relates to the suspension? I understand that they twist (torsion) and push up on the front end to provide support. I have SLR 28mm ones since I have some skids and a Calmini winch bumper. I take it the thicker and better constructed they are, the better they perform, but physics wise I am still a bit at a loss.

The animus of this is that I am trying to get a handle on why the torsion bars settle after I adjust them. Crank 'em up, and down they go after a day of driving. I'm curious to know if the physical mechanism dictates a certain amount of downard droop after the adjustment or if there's a load at which they naturally fall into equilibrium and won't go above.

It's settling every day ?

If they're settling every day ... you maybe forgetting to tighten that tightening bolt that keeps it tight? (Oh great description Jens, thanks.) :p

Not every day, no. It's a fairly new setup so I might not be broken in yet. I added some skids and cranked the torsion bars up and they settled down to about where they were before. Made me curious as to what in the torsion bars makes it fall. The corollary question is what this means empirically: If I tweak it up .5", will it always fall .25?" Will it alwways fall to a certain frame height?

Anyway. As long as it doesn't lower any more I'll be happy. I cranked them up assuming they'd settle a bit, which they did.

I've had the 26mm SLR bars for over a year and they aren't done settling. They dropped an inch or two a month at first. The settling has slowed down, but I still loose a little bit after every trip offroad. Driving around town doesn't seem to bother them.

I wonder if I should upgrade to an even thicker set of bars. I'm also adding sliders soon, although I imagine their weight is more distributed.

Still don't know how these things work. I guess I'll just try it all with trial and error. When I get the sliders installed I'll tighten up the torsion bars to be insane high and see how much they drop.

Vaca,
What specifically do you want to know about the torsion bar (in terms of physics)? The torsion bar acts as the "big spring" found on most domestic trucks (ford and chevy). It obeys Hooke's law just like every other spring in existance.

But, related to your problem, I agree with the rest of the folks, it looks as though your mount isn't tight.