Suspension bushes

[robwright]

Do you have PET mate? Which ones are you looking at replacing? If you don't have PET I can look up the numbers for you.

 

[DavidL]

Good point and yes I do have PET. How many, well I suppose as many as possible, hopefully without dismantling the whole car!

 

[robwright]

Group 4 for the front anti roll bar and caster mount bushes and group 5 for the rear bushes. I would stick with original mate unless you are radically updating the suspension. From experience the best price you will get for them is OPC and I speak from experience. Example front anti roll bar bush on the front around £2.70 []

 

[DavidL]

Before I spend out on nice new shiny dampers it seems a good idea to make sure the rest of the connections are up to speed.
So can anyone point me towards a pic/diagram showing where all the relevant bushes are for front and rear suspension. I hope this is something within my capabilities once I know where to look.

Question after that seems to be what to replace them with? Polybush? Powerflex (or are these the same thing?)

 

[DavidL]

anti-roll bar ones are new so just the rest needed. Cheers Rob.

 

[zcacogp]

Can't remember the details from when I did it, but the fronts were easy to get to but the rears were much harder. The front ARB ones are numerous but all easy. It's well worth doing the front wishbone ones as well. I did mine with powerflex purples (from Proven Products) but I think they have gone up in price quite a lot recently. There always seem to be sets of yellow ones available on eBay at a good price from a lesser-known supplier, and I suspect that are all pretty much of a muchness. The rears are quite a lot harder to do as the mounts for the rear trailing arms are all tied up with the torsion bars. I didn't change them. I can't remember what happened with the rear ARB mounts; I think I did them and I think they were pretty easy. Purely from thought (and not experience of playing around with them), I can't quite understand why the ARB bushes are so critical. I understand what ARB's do, and hence why they need to be connected firmly to both the suspension member and the body, but I would have thought that slight compliance in these bushes isn't that much of a big deal. What is much more critical (in my understanding) is keeping the wheels running in the right plane and direction, and this is controlled by the suspension component mount bushes. I'd have thought that uprating these would make much more difference than uprating the ARB mount bushes. (NOTE: this is all the spoutings of an inexperienced man, and shouldn't be given any authoritive weight at all. I may well be - and probably am - wrong.) Oli.

 

[chrisg]

If you're 'doing' the suspension bushes, the first place to start is the front ARB mounts in the brackets that hang down from the chassis rails. In particular the Off-side or drivers side one is usually saggy or soft due to leaking PAS fluid. Next check the small bushes that are in the T shaped piece that connects the ARB to the track control arm. It's at this stage where you may find this T unit is past it's best and needs replacing. IMHO, the 4 x rubber blocks that mount this T unit into the Track control arm are usually ok but always worth checking. Yours Chris

 

[Super_Marv]

ORIGINAL: zcacogp Purely from thought (and not experience of playing around with them), I can't quite understand why the ARB bushes are so critical. I understand what ARB's do, and hence why they need to be connected firmly to both the suspension member and the body, but I would have thought that slight compliance in these bushes isn't that much of a big deal. What is much more critical (in my understanding) is keeping the wheels running in the right plane and direction, and this is controlled by the suspension component mount bushes. I'd have thought that uprating these would make much more difference than uprating the ARB mount bushes. (NOTE: this is all the spoutings of an inexperienced man, and shouldn't be given any authoritive weight at all. I may well be - and probably am - wrong.) Oli.

So long as the ARBs are free to rotate around the bushes, then there's not really that much to be gained by using polybushes on the ARBs. Of course, they'll last longer and aren't ruined by powersteering fluid, but I've found the Powerflex bushes fitted to the outer ARB droplinks on my car are too tight a fit on the bar, which causes too much stiction and pre-load on the bar (the other Powerflex bushes for the ARBs are fine though, IME)