Hello guys and gals, as we all know the strut mount bushings fall apart on 97-06 xk8/r.
I have found polyurethane bushing material sold by the foot, so why not try to make my own bushings to rebuild the strut mounts?

It would be a hell of a lot cheaper than buying the kit and if it works I could sell a few sets to you all for cheap to absorb the cost of the materials.

So I ask do any of you have photos of the bushings? My only concern is that the unique shape could make it hard to simply cut out of a stock of polyurethane.
In which case I would have to make my own moulds thus making it not as cost effective.

I greatly appreciate any responses.

Thank you, Alex

 

I forgot to mention I need a photo of the rear strut mount bushings, I have the front and there are only 3 bushings so it will be easy to make.

 

Let me know if you need more pictures or measurements.

I will fit them tomorrow.

 

Pit, The fronts will be a welcome addition and much needed. The rears are a little more difficult as one is really cone shaped that surrounds the inner walls of the mount, the other two are pretty standard and need to be poly that fit on the shock tower. We just did the rears. The top cone was in good shape on both sides and the top bushing was worn both sides, so the measurement would be a bit off. Two weeks ago we could have had perfect sizes off the new set. Day late and dollar short.


Wayne

 

I have the old rear shock bushings in my hand right now. As Wayne said, they are cone-shaped. They measure right at 6 inches across on the outside diameter and right at 3.75 inches across on the inside diameter. They range in thickness from about 1.33 inches at the inside edge to about .8 inch at the outside edge. The problem is that both the outside edges and the inside edges are tapered. I think that in order to properly make them out of a stock poly material, you're going to have to have an original one available to use as a model. Without one in hand, you'll have to do a lot of guesswork on the tapers and slopes and you may not achieve the perfect fit that you want....

 

Jon and Pit, With your help this may be a big help. Jon, we both thought the top bushings in the rear shock at the top would have been great if in poly. One was about 1 and 3/4 inch wide and same thickness that fit into the cup at the bottom of the shock shaft and the one on top was about 1 and 1/4 and questionable high, due to wear. The top one was the major wear factor as far as the bushing go, on your car.
Pit, not sure the flying saucer looking thing would be a price effective effort.


Jon said to PM him if he can be of any help.


Wayne

 

Thank you all for your quick responses!

I have a set of low mileage mounts for the front that I have taken apart for measuments and I am confident in being able to reproduce these.
The shapes are simple and there is a decent amount of give in the design, so I am not worried about being precise.

Here are the measurements I came up with, please be kind to my drawing I am no engineer lol

All I need now is a rear mount, If anyone has one taken out that wouldn't mind taking apart and measuring that would be a tremendous help.

I think using 80 shore d material would be hard enough to shape. It seems the factory uses 70 or 75 shore d material so the ride shouldn't become too harsh.

I am worried that using 70 shore d material would be too soft to cut easily.

I will have to wait until monday to speak with suppliers of bulk polyurethane, so for now I am stuck.

 

The rear mounts would be of interest to me. I replaced the fronts earlier this year and plan on doing the rear this winter.

 

my front end is sitting LOW and looking at the top of the mounts in the motor bay there are not close to centered, and as I said front end is sitting a good inch from normal height. I know my front mounts are shot as **** from them is coming out the top of the mounts in motor bay. Putting new ones in there get my height back, fix my tires toe in at top of tires?

 

BRG, You will get a improvement, but if your springs are sagging, getting back to standard height won't happen. The lower shock bushing can be weak, along with top "A" arm, so just replacing the top bushing is not a miracle cure for all the possible ills that may be lurking behind your tires.
Then again, it can't hurt.


Wayne

 

Pluto,

If you want my original upper rear shock bushings (called "upper spring isolators" by Jaguar if I remember correctly) to use as templates for potential poly replacements, then PM me with your name and mailing address and I'll mail them to you. Wayne and I were both surprised a couple of weeks ago when we did the rear shocks replacement that both bushings were still in pretty good shape after more than 9 years and 83,000 miles. We expected them to be falling apart....

I won't have time to box them up and take them to the post office until next week, though. I'm doing an oil & filter change / tire rotation / rear sway bar bushing replacement on my wife's XK8 in just a few minutes and then more outside chores the rest of the day....

Gotta run now....

 

Thank you Jon, I have sent you the PM.

I stumbled upon something interesting, I just wish the price sheet was available online.

Energy suspension offers a wide range of universal polyurethane bushings.
Here is the link: Energy Suspension Universal Catalog

I will be calling them to get some prices.

 

Pit, I hope you have some luck with ES, I tried to find something from their list that would fit the bottom shock bushing, but they had very little with a 12MM sleeve.
I used some of their universal stuff on the TR6 and was very pleased.


Wayne

 

You know if you get a new stock bushing and make a silicone mold of it. You can create your own bushings. These bushings would be relatively easy to make. Id give it a try but im very short on time.


Material you can get at


BJB Enterprises | Quality Polyurethane & Silicone Mold Materials Worldwide


They even have some tutorial videos on youtube. If you have the time it wouldn't cost much to give it a try

 

There is a lot of scope in home made bushings. I made up new vee mount bushes using polyurethane and a simple plastic mould. Now working on low pressure injection moulding of polyurethane for other projects so lessons learned can be applied to various bits and pieces.

 

Those are the original metal pieces with new polyurethane fill?

 

Correct, The cavity in the cross member is also filled so the mount is not depending on adhesion, which is not anywhere near as good as the metaliastik process.

 

Very cool!

That would work perfectly for almost any application. Did you have to CNC plates for your molding process?

It looks like for the fill on the crossmember you used clay to mold?

 

CNC the mould out of plastic. and used modelling clay to keep the resin where needed. The important part is to keep the correct relative position of the 3 aluminium components, so these all bolted to the mould.