Making Polyurethane Bushings
Well my swaybar endlink bushings where shot. The endlinks could rotate around the rubber bushing inserts, so instead of buying new ones...Me and my dad decided to make our own Poly bushings. We ordered: Poly 75-Series RTV liquid rubber (part A), Poly 75-80 RTV liquid rubber (part B), and Poly UV additive (to protect the bushing from UV rays). It is a two-part Poly, And is very easy to work with.
Find the Poly products here.
Please note: you want to have some knowledge on the hardness of the poly you want to use or are thinking about using. To soft could ruin you nice tight/stock ride feel, and can also damage the suspension, and if you go too Hard, you will create what is called as suspension bind. Suspension bind is when you prevent the suspension components from moving correctly or freely, and that can cause serious problems like: really rough ride, damage to suspensions/frame parts or broken suspensions/frame parts. For this project...I used a poly with a durometer of 80 shore A, which is the lowest I would go for endlinks.
Sorry for the bad Pictures.
Here are the products we used.
First thing was to take off the endlinks and gut out the rubber bushings (which wasn't that hard becuase the bushing would fall out), and we cut all the rubber off the metal.
Then we cleaned up the endlinks and metal inserts with some Acetone and the endlinks where ready for the new poly bushings.
Endlinks gutted/cleaned and ready for poly.
We used blue painters tape as a guide for the poly and to hold the metal inserts in the center of the endlink. Then we were ready for the Poly.
We first mixed in UV additive to the Poly 75-80 (The UV additive has to be .05% of the total weight of the final rubber weight), and then mixed in the 75-Series to the other mixture (The 75-Series has to be twice the amount of the 75-80). We mixed it together for ~five minutes, and that only left 35 minutes to work with it (The Poly has a 40min workable time limit).
Poly ready to be used.
Poly being injected into the endlinks.
After we injected the Poly into the bushing, we let them cure for 24 hours. The actual cure time for the poly is seven days so they are still off the car right now.
And here are the finished Endlinks, but are still fully curing.
We ended up putting a washer on each side of the endlink so we could put poly all the way to the end for a little bit tighter and more responsive swaybar.
I have to drive the car next week with out the front bar, and I already miss my front bar (Oh well...Now I can get the back end to swing out A LOT easier now
). I am expecting the new poly bushings to be even better, and will report back when I install them.
I know that these can't compare with Spherical end links, but it will be a hell of a lot better than stock rubber bushings.
Over all the project is pretty simple to do. All you need is the Poly and additives, an accurate scale, and some time.
The only real problem you might have when doing this is that Polytek only sells certain amounts (because they are the manufacter), and the poly is kind of expensive.
Luckly my dad needs all of that poly to finish his other cars and we are making custom bushings for his other cars
.
- UPDATE: -
It has been seven days and I just installed them and went for a test drive. All I can say is WOW! It is a huge improvement over the stock rubber bushings. The new custom poly with IPD's upper endlink bushings works realy well together. The car is a little flatter around the turns and they don't squeal. It just makes the car that much more enjoyable when driving. I can't wait to take the car to a track .
Here is the new Endlinks installed:
Close up of them. You can see the poly goes to all the way to where we put the washers:
Here is the new IPD upper bushings:
This upgrade was definitly worth it, and even if you don't make your own...you should still get some either from
IPD or Kaplhenke Racing.
Happy Modding
.