Radius Arm Bushings: Stock vs. Urethane

[Jet Ski Puller]

Getting ready to replace my radius arm bushings. Having those nasty vibrations at 65. Got a suggestion that that might help.

Seems like I read on here somewhere before that the stock ones were a little better.

What are the pros and cons of each?

Thanks.

 

[Redrig]

no the other ones are. and there not much more expensive

 

[mrboyle]

If you can wait a couple days to get them, the best bushings I have ever used are a urethane bushing made by a company called ProThane. The only place I have been able to find them is through J.C.Whitney. http://jcwhitney.com/SearchCatContainer.jhtml?_requestid=91990

 

[Jet Ski Puller]

And, there's no adverse affects / vibration due to the increased stiffness of the urethane over natural rubber?

 

[Hartman]

Make sure you grease the urethane's good or else they'll sqeak on you.

 

[Maniak]

One other thing you may want to think of..

If you have bad caster split (e.g. you truck pulls to one side becuase it has different caster than the other side) you can get a set of caster adjustable poly bushings from Moog (Federal-mogul).

It allows you to change you caster up to 1 degree to get rid of caster induced pull AND they are poly...

One drawback.. I'm only getting about 20k miles out of a set of the caster adjustables.. and with the normal poly's I got almost 40k.

the rubber ones only last me 20k also.

I do lots of freeway driving, and 4 miles of dirt every day.. plus wheeling.. I tend to wear out the bushings.

~Mark

 

[Jet Ski Puller]

Which ones would be better at decreasing vibration potential up front? Aren't the urethane ones much stiffer?

Thanks.

 

[Rhett]

Either type of bushing can potentially eliminate the vibration, IF the bushings are the cause. But there are many other things that can cause vibration (ball joints, driveline, wheels, bearings, etc.). What it boils down to is what kind of ride you want. If you want a tighter ride, better cornering, less sway, and you don't want to replace them for 50,000-75,000 miles, get poly bushings. If you want a smoother ride, but sloppier handling, and don't mind replacing every 20-30,000 miles, get rubber ones. The truck will ride rougher with polys, just take that into consideration. I personally run polys and don't regret it. My truck doesnt vibe either. Smooth up to 90 mph and that's about my max speed.

 

[lonestar]

The only thing I could find on JCWhitney was the TOTAL KIT

Do they sale the RA bushings seperate? The link above doesn't work.

 

[Rhett]

I would do a web search of "Prothane"..maybe they have a company site that will let u buy just the RAB's.

I got my polys from AutoZone for $15 but I really would rather have the Prothanes or Daystars, but now I know a lot more than I did back then...

 

[biggs92EB]

I got daystars I bought them from a place id never hear of out of the midwest I just did a search for polyurathane bushings and found what i needed I recommend replacing the pivot axle bushings also my truck only had 90K on it when i replaced them and mine fell apart So like she said - "while your down there"

 

[JohnFornaro]

Wanna know a little more about RA Bushings

I was just browsing this thread, and had a couple of Q's about Radius arm bushings. My mechanic replaced them about a year ago to get rid of a nasty vibration at 65. He cut off the rivets, replaced the bushings and replaced the rivets with high strength bolts. The vibration sort of went away...

Did he use rubber or polyurethane? The bushings are a light grey in color. They now have about 18K miles on them. The vibration came back and is ruining my tires. I'm a little P.O.'d at him right now, because he's rather expensive, and he has not solved my vibration problem. Now, he wants to sell me four new tires about a year before I need them, because he says with absolute certainty: "It's those tires that are causing the vibration."

If rubber, I expect to change them every 20K miles? Yikes. Then I'll go with polyurethane. However, I'd like to know with more certainty where my vibration is coming from, because otherwise, I should just buy another car, rather than pay him the same amount to misdiagnose year after year.

Any comments would be helpful.