holey bushings?

[ferdinand]

so i was looking through the archives and read some posts about bushings with holes drilled through them for extra flex. how have they turned out? any durability issues?

i'm sure that this topic has been discussed but i couldn't find a thread and honestly, i'm still a bit too cheep to get a star. lame, i know.

thanks for answering something that may have been answered already.

andy

[wilsby]

Yes, they work.

Yes, they wear fast.

Try to get hold of Sam's holey bushes that are cast with oblong holes in the rubber. Find him here or on the Outerlimits board.

[Agrover]

It seems to me that holey bushings remove rubber in exactly the same area that rubber is required to resist drive and braking forces No ?

[wilsby]

Not really. When they are new, they are fine. When worn - terrible. All the rubber front and rear is left intact. The purpose is to remove some of the anti roll bar effect of the radius arms.

Originally Posted by Agrover

It seems to me that holey bushings remove rubber in exactly the same area that rubber is required to resist drive and braking forces No ?

[SeaRover]

andy, welcome to pirate

i tried to get my hands on a set of holey bushings but wasn't persistent enough, apparenty. They're difficult to obtain, I don't think Sam ever found a distribution point stateside that he was happy with ... unless someone got a stash of 'em around here and didn't tell anybody.

[ferdinand]

well thank you isaac

i remember we talked about it a little but then it slipped my mind. thought i'd check in here. seemed like such a cool idea...

[DiscoDino]

Don't Scrap Iron have a copy of these in ORANGE?

[ferdinand]

thanks again for the info. maybe i'll attempt to replicate them myself as i'm sure the stock bushings that are on my truck are on their way out...

ike-sorry for the overly hostile smiley! didn't realize you piraters had two flipoff icons.

a

[SeaRover]

Originally Posted by ferdinand

thanks again for the info. maybe i'll attempt to replicate them myself as i'm sure the stock bushings that are on my truck are on their way out...

ike-sorry for the overly hostile smiley! didn't realize you piraters had two flipoff icons.

a

fawking newbie

with flogged out bushings i could max out 10" shocks, which were mounted with about 35% uptravel, and the rest all down. didn't need the drill. unless you're going to look into 3-linking the front ... keep the rear suspension fairly stock and run longer shocks on the front. when the rear maxes out it'll force the front to work harder to compensate.

most people do the opposite, installing longer shocks in the rear to take advantage of the factory 3-link on the older trucks, and then complain about the front end being stiff. it's not true! if you let the rear drop-out with no resistance, the front-end has to be really flexy to see much articulation.

[ferdinand]

Originally Posted by SeaRover

fawking newbie

what do you expect? getting the rear to work hard is easier, maybe that's why most people work that way. if craig's new heim joints hold out on his blingsteins, maybe i'll go that route.

andy

[Johnny5]

Originally Posted by DiscoDino

Don't Scrap Iron have a copy of these in ORANGE?

Yes they do, right now Mike H. (D-90) has a set and will be testing them on his D90. Larry G has a set of Sam's slotted bushings on his truck and should have some results for us pretty soon.

[Agrover]

Originally Posted by wilsby

Not really. When they are new, they are fine. When worn - terrible. All the rubber front and rear is left intact. The purpose is to remove some of the anti roll bar effect of the radius arms.

The bushings would need to be fitted with all 3 holes concentric with the axle shafts to allow the axle housing to roll for and aft more freely during articulation. To my way of thinking this introduces an undesirable characteristic of the diff pinion toggling up higher during heavy braking, reducing castor angle which would cause instability, particularly on lifted vehicles without castor correction. The pinion would also toggle down further with drive loads, and when the front end is scrabbling for traction I feel axle hop would be exaggerated with the the pinion toggling from one exteme to the other. Any counter arguments welcome.
bill.

[tobbjo]

I've seen the effect you are describing, Bill.
On Wilsby's 110, while struggling to get out of a mud hole, later named "Wilsby's ditch", for this feat.
As a side story it was the way it was because the army used theese grounds for training their drivers on the 6x6 Volvo portals, with snow chains.
A fully locked 4 ton 6x6 portal rig on 35" + HD Snow chaings dig some serious ditches.

Anyway, Wilsby was running drilled or Sam's bushings at the time and was powering pretty heavily to get over the undercut ledge at the end of the ditch. The pinions yawing could be clearly seen. Might even be a video of it somewhere.

T

[wilsby]

These are also the grounds where I broke my only AEU2522, but that is another story.

It is a tradeoff, and the holey bushes are acceptable when fresh. They allow my front axle to articulate the full stroke of my 12" Blingensteins with stock radius arms, poly at the frame end and fairly stiff King Springs. The rear is on 14" shocks, so the whole thing is fairly compliant. At close to 3 tons, is still jumps gracefully in the sand, as seen on one of Tobias' video clips.

I did a registration inspection with winch and full exo cage two years ago, and one of the guys was fascinated by the agile front pinion when braking in the inspection hall. I have changed bushings since...

On road behaviour gets interesting if you allow anything to wear on this rig, but if you keep everyting up to snuff, it is quite driveable. I plan to take the family on a Sweden- Morocco-Sweden trip with it in a year or two, but that may say more about us than the truck.

[SeaRover]

Originally Posted by ferdinand

what do you expect? getting the rear to work hard is easier, maybe that's why most people work that way. if craig's new heim joints hold out on his blingsteins, maybe i'll go that route.

andy

they won't. heims and 4-season road-use do not mix. we've talked about it a few times. when i ran these on gatsby, the only road use it saw was getting to the trail-head so i didn't really care. if you want to keep a "mixed-use" purpose for your rig, skip the bling and just fit some OME's.

[ferdinand]

i still think we should cut off the heims and install regular mounts on the ends. since they're all rebuildable and what not, we could just remove the shafts if craig gets concerned about the two of us working on it that way there's no chance we'll bugger up that one shock...

in all seriousness, i would have a pro do the work but i think it's doable, and worth it if it works.

andy

oh, and thanks for all the updates in the bushings and their performance.

[Strange Rover]

Hey.......great to see this stuff still gets kicked around!!!

So an update - yes we still get them made, yes they increase articulation, yes they wear out and yes they are very hard to get hold of if you dont live in Australia.

Aaaah - those were good times.

Was actually in the US last month....could have brought some over with me.

http://www.we-rock.cc/comps/06_artic..._postwrite.php

Sam

[wilsby]

I spoke to Bilstein the other day. When I told their lifted truck expert that my heims on 7100's died young, he suggested I use Protane bushings as a replacement for the heims. Available from Buglist, and possibly others.