Alignment without Sway Bar

I just took the sway bar off my 2013 TRD Sport and am planning to leave it off. Suspension has a much better feel. It helped with that stuff TRD Sport suspension. Can I still get it aligned without the sway bar on or would I have to install it before bringing it to the shop?

 

You can get the alignment done without the sway bar.

 

a sway (or actually anti-sway) bar tends to keep the truck from swaying (or more precisely, from leaning to one side or the other). That is what a sway bar does: prevent body lean. A sway bar does nothing at all unless the vehicle is inclined to lean to one side, but when it does start to lean (which usually means the vehicle is turning — every car or truck tends to lean to the outside of a turn), the sway bar applies force to the suspension on each side, upward on one side and downward on the other, that tends to resist the leaning. Nothing to do with alignment.

 

Thanks for the quick response guys

 

As you have alluded it is actually an anti-roll or stabiliser bar--four wheel vehicles do not "sway"--skyscrapers sway, side-to-side about their base, as much as 4 to 5 feet at the top of some--four-wheele vehicles roll, about a central fore-aft axis.

FWIW I have never found that removing an anti-roll bar (front or rear) improved anything (changed handling yes, but improved it, no)--if it did it would be pretty silly for almost every automaker there is to spend money engineering, making and installing them...

 

The ride may have been improved by the 100 LB bed mat I put in the truck at the same time

 

Bed mats are surprisingly heavy, the OEM mat is 80 lbs...

 

I cut a horse stall mat to fit and I think it was a little over a 100 before I started cutting. The bed was kind of bouncy before. Still rides like a truck but vearable

 

Mine rides like a truck too--which is unremarkable, as it is a truck. Get a Ridgeline if you want a "truck" that rides like an SUV. Or wait 'til the 4th gen Tacoma's; by then the marketing department will have them completely "pussified for broader appeal" as well...

 

I'm fine with how it rides I just don't always run with weight in the bed so the mat helps