When replacing the springs, I broke both of the old stabilizer bar end links taking them out, because apparently 291k miles of northeastern weather seizes things together. The shaft that went through the stabilizer bar (known as a sway or anti-roll bar to the non mopar world) was worn from the stabilizer bar, and when I torqued the nut, the shaft snapped.
I figured it'd be easy to find new ones, so I just lashed the sway bar to the frame and left it alone for a while. Today I started looking for the end links, and struck out, very quickly.
Dodge no longer makes those endlinks. There is one seller who seems to have bought all of the NOS across the country, and is now selling them for $109 on eBay. I decided I was going to weld some grade 8 nuts onto the old bushing carrier, but that wasn't going to happen, because they were cast steel/iron, and I'm nowhere near good enough with a TIG to make that work. In retrospect, I should have just cut the riser shaft and the head of the nut off, then welded those together, but I thought I could do it. I tried pressing out the rubber bushing, but failed miserably, as the bushing started to disintegrate as soon as I got some pressure on it from the press. I tried welding with the bushing in there. I got it tacked, then it all went down hill from there. I started with about 15a but then bumped it up to 30A to get a good puddle going, and then filled the garage and my helmet with rubber smoke. Oops. I tried again, and still couldn't get good penetration without destroying the rubber.
So, I came inside, trolled the internet for approximately three hours to find thi on summit racing's website, cross referenced the part numbers, found that I could get it locally. So, I went for this:
http://www.autozone.com/parts/suspe...-cylinders-l-2-4l-mfi-dohc/526738_10302_3499/
Which looks almost like this:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/4WD-Sway-Ba...Ram-4-WD-Ramcharger-Trailduster-/262063060628
And looked like what I had in my hand. So, I called autozone, and they had ONE. One of them. Only one. But, the non-value brand, they had four. I asked them to hold 'em, drove out there, and got it. The kid who rang me up asked what car they were going on, and I just laughed at him. He told me that it didn't matter, I've got a lifetime warranty on it anyway.
So, now it's got a sway bar that works.
The other day, I was driving to work, and the "check engine" light was blinking/flickering... So I ignored it.
Then, a day later, I saw it again, so I tapped the part of the dash it sits in. And it stopped flickering.