Hi All,

I am currently in the process of refurbing the rear axle and trailing arms of my Exmo. I've had to remove all the bushes from both of these to allow them to be blasted and powder coated. The rear end is based on a mk1 sierra.

My question is, Which bushes shall I use on rebuild? Do I go for Polyurethane bushes, or OEM spec ones or even a combination of the two?

A friend of mine suggested that because of the lack of weight, the poly bushes might make the ride a bit harsh and a bit squirrelly at the rear end?

I am open to hear suggestions on this! 

Cheers 

Edited May 22, 20242 yr by Camb493

As no one has replied to this yet I expect there may be little experience of using poly. The Oem ones seem to last about 30 years, I’m sure that a bit of flex helps in the ever changing geometry of a semi trailing arm arrangement too.

1 hour ago, Peter Bell said:

As no one has replied to this yet I expect there may be little experience of using poly. The Oem ones seem to last about 30 years, I’m sure that a bit of flex helps in the ever changing geometry of a semi trailing arm arrangement too.

Thanks for the reply, I am getting that feeling as well! That's a very good point. The bushes I removed hadn't been changed since the mid 90s and they still seemed very serviceable still, it almost seemed a shame removing them! the lack of experience in using poly might be quite telling that there simply isn't a need for such a harsh bush on a light car. I think I'll stick to the OEM one! 

Cheers 👍

It was some years ago, and I'm not sure I fully understood my mechanic when we decided to replace the bushes on the front suspension of my Superspec (one was an advisory on the MOT but we decided to replace all 4).    When he pulled out the old ones he was a bit surprised and said they were very hard and really used just for racing, not toddling along.   I presented hime with 2 replacement sets,  The first was from KitSpares (GBS) for £8.70

The others were from Powerflex and were polyurethene and I think they cost around £25.

He was a bit concerned that the Kit Spares ones were a bit soft, so he used the PowerFlex ones.   So far they are working well.

 

17 hours ago, alanrichey said:

It was some years ago, and I'm not sure I fully understood my mechanic when we decided to replace the bushes on the front suspension of my Superspec (one was an advisory on the MOT but we decided to replace all 4).    When he pulled out the old ones he was a bit surprised and said they were very hard and really used just for racing, not toddling along.   I presented hime with 2 replacement sets,  The first was from KitSpares (GBS) for £8.70

The others were from Powerflex and were polyurethene and I think they cost around £25.

He was a bit concerned that the Kit Spares ones were a bit soft, so he used the PowerFlex ones.   So far they are working well.

 

That’s great! thanks for the info on that. I might give them a go and see how they get on! 

Cheers 👍