Can someone tell me which front end bushings affect the firmness of the ride the most on a 940?

 

None. Springs and shocks affect the ride

 

worn out bushings can increase the sloppiness of the ride. On a 7/9, the double cone bushings connecting the lower radius arm to the main lower control arm in particular is prone to wear and making for sloppy front wheel control. worn swaybar bushings tend to make rattles and klunks.

but yeah, what lev says, 'firmness' is a function of spring rate and shock damping.

 

Interesting. I had a hunch that this was so. My car handles great and there's absolutely no slop in the front end but the ride is harsher than my old Ford Taurus. I have the original coils springs on a '93 Turbo Wagon and just put brand new replacement gas shocks on and I hate the ride. I think I'll go back to oil shocks, since I don't plan on racing the car and after seeing this:




Does anyone make an oil shock besides Sachs?


Thanks

 

boge/sachs were the original shocks on these cars, and are still the best choice.

going to 16 or 17" wheels also harshes the ride, the original 15" with the stock tire size gives the most comfortable ride.

 

I find this interesting. The coil springs for turbos and non-turbos are the same part number. Yet turbos get gas shocks and gl's get oil shocks. So why would there be a problem if I put oil shocks on my turbo to improve the ride?

 

note that turbos also have a thicker anti-swaybar. this adds some harsh to the ride (mine has a even thicker IPD bar in it, which was probably a mistake, but boy its fun on mountain roads...)

 

Speaking of swaybars, the standard front bar is 23mm and the IPD front bar is 25mm. Can just 2 mm make that much of a difference?


I don't know the size of the rear bars.

 

Speaking of coil springs, I just measured the distance between the ground and all 4 jacking points on my car and the driver's side is 1/2 inch lower, front and back. Does this mean my springs are worn or could it be something else?

 

i believe the spring force of a torsion bar is related to the square of the diameter, if all else is equal (length, leverage on the ends, etc). if thats the case, 25mm is 20% stiffer than 23mm. note this is true for coil springs, too, which if you think about it are torsion bars wrapped around a helix.

 

Do you IPD on the rear? If so, what's the difference there?

 

I did. the wagons have /no/ swaybar in back stock. I also put overload springs on the rear, as I frequently use this car packed to the gills for road trips, and it has bilstein TC shocks and 16" rims with /55 series tires. net effect is, busy ride on rough roads when empty, but great handling, and good ride when fully loaded.

 

I'll say. I don't think you could get anything else on there. Since I rarely load up my wagon I'm actually thinking about putting sedan springs in the back for the ride. But first I have to figure out why my driver's side is 1/2 " lower than the left?

 

I'd check the suspension bushings for play. a mm of play in a crucial pivot can multiply to significantly more sag.

also make sure all tires are equally inflated, of course.

 

After re-measuring it's just the back on the driver's side. Jacking point and apex of the fender are 1/2 inch lower. I'll check out the bushings and out of curiosity if one of those new rear shocks are bad would that make it sag? Hard to believe that both front and rear would not sag if it was the driver's weight causing the coil to sag.

 

shocks won't make it sag, they are just dampers, stop it from bouncing.

there's a pad under the spring, if that was missing you'd get about 1/2" lower probably.. and there's the main pivot that the rear trailing arm pivots on, if that was shot and sloppy, all bets are off.

rest of the rear joints shouldn't affect ride height, just make clunks on bumps or on-off throttle (the thrust arms) or left to right or right to left transitions (the panhard rod)

 

Thanks, I'll check all that out.

 

Btw, I do have a stock 14mm rear swaybar on my '93. Do you know the size of your IPD rear bar?

 

I've not measured it, but their instructions state "1" Diameter", so presumably 25mm. They say the front is also 1"

 

Does you car tend to have oversteer since you put the swaybars on?