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ShadowBolt
01-25-2011, 09:26 AM
While replacing the junk rotors on the 55 I saw the top half of the sway bar bushing at the mount on the drivers side is gone. I replaced the stock rubber units with polyurethane. How much did the broken rubber unit hurt the car and what difference will it make going to polyurethane instead of rubber?


JJ

RichardP
01-25-2011, 09:56 AM
While replacing the junk rotors on the 55 I saw the top half of the sway bar bushing at the mount on the drivers side is gone. I replaced the stock rubber units with polyurethane. How much did the broken rubber unit hurt the car and what difference will it make going to polyurethane instead of rubber?


Not much difference. Without any bushing there, you had the same sway bar rate but with a small bit of slop as the rolled either way.

The stock rubber bushings have a bit of drag to rotation and compress a little bit under load. The urethane bushings compress a little bit less and fresh lubed urethane bushings have a bit less or more drag than the rubber depending on how tight they are. Neglected urethane bushings tend to weld themselves to the sway bar adding significant drag to suspension motion and making static ride height very inconsistent. Add a zerk fitting if they don't already have one and keep them lubed...


Richard P.