Is it safe to drive with this bar broken?

Sorry if it's the wrong section to post this.

Today I looked under my car and saw this bar link came off the socket. The car passed the inspection a few months back, so I am assuming it just broke off recently.

I am planning to fix it myself when weather warms up. so my question is that is it safe to drive around with this bar broken?



Thanks in advance.

 

The whole truck doesn’t look safe to drive lol

 

That’s just the sway bar so yes you can drive without it

 

It's your sway bar. It's safe to drive, but you'll have much more body roll than before. This could potentially be unsafe during high speed maneuvers (like swerving on the highway to avoid a crash). Lots of people, myself included, permanently remove them.

 

Yep, she'll be a little looser in the curves than before but don't they all do that with age?

Lol.

That broken sway bar link is no problem, drive the hell out of it.

 

Looks like that trucks already been to hell and back. At least a few times. At this point it’s held together by rust

 

Even the rubber is rusting!!

 

Fine to drive without but disconnect the other side and fully remove the sway bar. If you drive it as is you're gonna destroy your CVs

EDIT: realized it's 2wd but I'd still remove the sway bar alltogether. I wouldn't wanna drive around with one end flopping around.

 

Geez! What year is your truck? You might want to see if you can take it in for the frame recall.

 

Yes, we get tons of snow/salt every winter. do you think my year falls under the frame warranty? my frame is not rotted, it's just very rusty looking lol

 

Thanks for all the replies, I will looking into replacing it if it's not too hard.

 

This makes me squirm. The shock body is the same color/Rusty level as the lca

 

I'm surprised how unrusted the sway bar itself is in comparison.

 

It's worth a call to your local dealer at least...

 

Where do you park that thing? Under water?

 

By that rust I would find it hard to believe there isn’t a hole in the frame somewhere. A ball peen would be very telling.

 

I have no words to describe the horror I feel in my soul for that truck.

I don't know how you Rustbelters do it. I couldn't and won't do it for neither love nor money.

 

I grew up in the Southwest. No offense OP, but to a SW kid, your photo could pass for undersea Titanic wreckage. I do feel better about the surface rust on my sliders, though, so gotta say thanks for helping put things into perspective!

 

I've always lived in central or southern California. I've never had to deal with salt on the roads or newer vehicles with rust. However I've owned a several classic cars and trucks that had severe rust issues. I'm surprised by some of these comments in this thread because that rust doesn't look too severe to me. From what I see in rust the only concern I'd have is the thin Tacoma frame, none of the other parts look that bad to me. I would definitely be smacking the frame with a ball peen hammer. As far as removing the busted sway bar link, removing the other side's sway bar link, or removing the sway bar itself there is no factual reason to remove any of it, with the exception of the busted link rattling around and making noise. It makes me wonder how many of the commenters know how sway bars work. Whatever, have a ball.

 

What's a sway bar? Is it that thing that I trip over that takes up space in my garage?

To be fair, if I had a 2wd Tacoma or one that didn't see dirt duty, I would likely leave my sway bar in place.