hey all

A few years ago I replaced the worn upper shock bushings with PU versions, along with the shocks and the entire suspension in fact.
in cold weather, I was having clonking noises until the bushings became warm (I guess), which eventually drove me mad so I tried to tighten the things so that they wouldn't have any room to move up and down.

Result = damaged shock threads, beyond repair, so... I changed those again. And I still can't tighten enough to prevent these noises (it's even worse...). Trying to tighten more causes the tip of the shock to get deformed so it's increasingly difficult to have any grip.

Any tips to resolve that, short of changing these bushings again?

 

Polyurethane bushes have tendensy to shrink in cold weathers. Especially in freezing temps. How much this matters is all about the bush type, model etc. My winter beater Volvo has pu front swaybar chassis bushes. They have had no any slack in them in these 8 years what them have been installed. But frend on mine has lot's of cars with pu bushes and says that it is every winter phenomenon to have noises when temps are colder than -10'c or so.

 

yeah, noises occur more like below 8°C here, so... quite often

 

Any reason you dont want to switch back to the oem style?

 

No, that would be an option.
however I don't really want to purchase the full assembly, and haven't found standalone bushings.


also earlier today I was trying to tighten the thing a bit more, I barely touched one of the coolant hoses, which litterally shattered. Godammit.

 

The bushings are compressed by two large "washers" with a sleeve connecting them. The height of this sleeve determines how compressed they get. The shock nut bottoms against this sleeve, tightening it more won't compress the bushings any more unless you're deforming the sleeve.
You have two options to adjust this system.
1. Shorten the top of the spacer slightly so that the nut compresses the system more.
2. Add washers with an ID slightly larger than the spacer od. This is reversible and can even be done without disassembling the unit, just being careful to align the washer to clear the spacer.

 

Ha... so I was doing it absolutely wrong. Thanks, I will try that out.

 

ok so I just pressed back the old bushings that I had kept for some reason, which aren't too worn, and significantly thicker than the PU one. Didn't tighten the shocks too much as it clearly isn't needed.

also repaired the coolant hose, fml.

I'll go for a test drive later today, then decide whether I should sink the car in the Geneva lake or keep it a little longer.

 

At any of the suppliers, in US, you can buy either e heyURO and Mejlr shock mounts totally prepared for about $30 apiece. These work exceptionally well in cold weather, whereas the polyurethane gets hard as a rock and chatters.

 

Yeah - with shipment and taxes, it's not such a great deal over here, but I keep it as an option.

Another downside of the PU bushings is that they seem to convey every single asperity of the road to the steering wheel, which seriously affect the comfort.

so test drive results : silent on the right, still noisy on the left. Perhaps that sleeve is damaged and doesn't hold the bushings properly, so I'll try the washer trick. Still... it's a great improvement.

 

I asked the JEC tech director if I should poly bush the front end on my car when I first got it....all keen and eager to 'improve' it.... he stated just the front anti roll bar bushes are an order of magnitude harder than any poly bushes. I didn't bother - this platform has XJ6/XJ40/X300 ride and handling development that only Porsche 911 have a longer lineage of constant updating. Why mess with it.

 

Actually my reasoning was: I changed the entire suspension in 2018, front and rear, all links, all bushings, including the ball joints (bought a 20-ton hydraulic press just for those!). Basically I just kept the springs.

And I really, really didn't want to do that ever again. I figured these PU bushings would remain in good shape until the car reached its bitter end.
Which would probably be the case, but the downsides are just unacceptable.

 

That is just ONE of the reasons I like to go OEM with the Duchess,.