ES bushing epiphany.. something im sure yall already knew.

[90kacoupe]

When i had the subframe out of my car and all the suspension peices apart.. i didnt put any of my ES bushings in the uprights or the LCA's.. the reason i didnt is because the stock bushings were stiff enought.. but after messing with my suspension with out the shockson. (moving it up and down) i realized i need to press those bushings in asap.. and here is my reasoning.. and correct me if im wrong..

with the stock bushing the metal sleeve in the center is made into the bushing.. and in the ES they are not.. so when u tighten down ur stock bushing it pulls the metal sleeve tight. and when ur control arms move it fights the rubber in the bushing the whole time, limiting the movement. with ES bushings the metal sleeve is seperate so when the control arm moves the metal sleeve will turn inside the bushing instead of trying to twist the bushing..

im sure yall already knew this, but i felt like i made a decent discovery.. lol and correct me if im wrong on any of this..

[a_ahmed]

welcome to the real world mr. neo...

haha jk :P That's why rubber bushings rip and suck, not that polyurethane are an excellent alternate in contrast to spherical solutions.

[90kacoupe]

lol yea this is something im gonna do on my s13 subframe for now since i have all the parts.. but when i do the s14 subframe swap.. everything for it will be spherical bearings..

[Def]

I'd avoid the urethane bushings for our rear uprights.

Urethane is a very high friction material against metal, and you can grease the crap out of the metal sleeve and it'll rotate with moderate friction when you first install it. A few weeks/months down the road, and almost all the grease will have squeezed/run out, and you'll essentially have an almost unmovable link generating a huge amount of friction whenever your suspension tries to actually move(which is the whole point of a suspension).

Stock rubber bushings act more like a spring which is not ideal as they're variable with suspension travel. The rubber also has lots of internal friction, so they're not completely frictionless.

Bottom line - friction in your suspension is bad. In an ideal world you'd have zero friction in all your suspension links.

Spherical bearings are king in eliminating friction AND eliminating compliance/deflection, stock rubber bushings are way behind in the friction category, and probably worst from a compliance/deflection standpoint. Urethane is lightyears WORSE than any other bushing solution with regards to friction, and only marginally better than rubber from a compliance standpoint. Overall I'd say spherical bearings if you can even possibly justify the expense(I'm working to make that jump a little more affordable), or keep the stockers.

Nismos would probably trade less compliance for more friction and more of that "hard to control" spring effect. Probably not worth the $$$ unless you really feel the tradeoffs are worth it and that's all your autox/race class allows.

[ecugrad]

Delrin?

I know that's gonna be a DIY kinda thing

[Def]

Delrin is a horrible bushing material really. It's only good in a class where you can't use anything else. I guess it gets rid of the compliance, and has less friction than urethane, but it's still really high AND they don't let things axially rotate, which is a must(i.e. turn left and right while rotating the pivot). So you end up with a ton of binding, probably more than our stock bushings with all the stuff going on back there.

E36/E46 M3 club racers only use them on the front control arm bushing that actually gets a benefit out of not axially rotating(keeps the wheel in the same position - kinda the same as us using rigid tension rods up front). Other than that, most have found them to be trash when trying to replace a complex bushing like pretty much everything on our car.

[racepar1]

The only bushings where delrin would work on our cars it the RLCA bushings as they do not need any axial movement, just radial, For that application delrin is actually a pretty good solution as it is impregnated with carbon, which makes it somewhat self-lubricating. I think urethane bushings are an order of magnitude better than the stock rubber ones, but still not anywhere near ideal. A good idea if you are installing urethane bushings is to install grease fittings so that they can be lubed regularly because like DEF said they lose lube and begin binding quickly.

[Def]

They likely are better than a stock bushing when well lubed. They quickly start sucking with tons of friction after that though. Grease/zerk fittings might be an option - but at that point with the effort involved I think there are better options. Keep in mind you'd probably be looking at weeks to maybe a few months max between greasings - and the mess that would follow as it's pushed out.

[racepar1]

Ya but a good spherical bearing is going to run at least $50 each and there are 16 bushings in the rear suspension including the LCA bushings and 12 not including them. That works out to $800 for all 16 sphericqal bearings and $600 for everything but the LCA's. Beyond that you would have to machine up your own sleeves for the bearings as well as the spacers for them and if you don't put bearings in the LCA's you have to machine up some delrin bushings and some metal sleeves. Bottom line is that bearings are not an attainable solution for a lot of people. Installing some zerk fittings, greasing the bearings regularly and cleaning up the mess regualrly is much more realistic.

[Def]

Well, arms are cheap enough and satisfy the spherical part on one end, and I'll be offering some Aurora bearings for $100/pair, so I don't think it's a complete deal breaker when you're talking about putting a nice set of dampers on the car and other arms.

I've thought about delrin on the rear LCA, but I wonder how it'd work in practice. I agree sphericals in the stock rear LCA is probably cost prohibitive given how many of them there are.

[jmauld]

How often do spherical bearings need to be lubed?

Would Delrin work in the front Control Arm, with the stock (or nismo) rubber bushing in the T/C rod?

[Def]

How often do spherical bearings need to be lubed?

Would Delrin work in the front Control Arm, with the stock (or nismo) rubber bushing in the T/C rod?

Never if they have PTFE liners(all should for use on cars).

Nope, even with sphericals the control arm has some rotation due to the tension rod being bolted to it. On stock/Nismo bushing arms the front control arm is going to be moving around like crazy.

[jmauld]

How much movement are you talking?

Where I'm headed, is that I don't know how much play would be allowed by a polyurethane/delrin bushing that is only ~4mm thick (working off of memory here).

On the flipside, I also don't know how much movement would be forced on the control arm by a T/C rod that is using a spherical bearing. To me, it always seemed like using a spherical on the T/C rod and not on the control was a bad idea. If you did one, you really should do both of them. At least, from the way that I understand their movement.

Do you agree, that in an ideal setup, the control arm would only move straight up and down? I assume that the angle on the T/C rod is an attempt to reduce the amount of push/pull that it has on the control arm as it moves in an arc?

[Def]

There is essentially zero give in delrin, a little bit in urethane.

The control arm gets rotated by the simple fact that the tension rod by definition(it is a rod) is straight from its bracket to where it mounts to the control arm. Move the control arm up and down and you can see that the tension rod will force the control arm to rotate as it swings in this arc. The tension rod cannot be in the "control arm is flat" position as it swings in an arc.

[Def]

As for ideal setup, yes, I think angling the control arm isn't optimal, but there isn't an even remotely easy solution to that that still involves the stock suspension mounting points. With sphericals everywhere the angling of the arm becomes a non-issue.

[racepar1]

I have been talking about installing zerk fittings with the energy bushings on a few different threads here. Well I am installing them on my car and documenting it to make a how to thread. Time for me to put my money where my mouth is!

[racepar1]

Do you agree, that in an ideal setup, the control arm would only move straight up and down? I assume that the angle on the T/C rod is an attempt to reduce the amount of push/pull that it has on the control arm as it moves in an arc?


In an ideal set-up our cars would have double wishbones/a-arms rather than the crappy macpherson strut suspension in the front.

[ecugrad]

In an ideal set-up our cars would have double wishbones/a-arms rather than the crappy macpherson strut suspension in the front.

I have a friend who is converting a 1g RX-7 from Macpherson to SLA, I'll post some pics when he gets them up.

Here is a preview

http://www.v8mongrel.com/_i/080503_work/DriverStrutTowerOne1.jpg

He has the mounts supposedly done.

[Epstein]

In an ideal set-up our cars would have double wishbones/a-arms rather than the crappy macpherson strut suspension in the front.

The company I work for has a relationship with Full-Race, who a couple years back figured out how to convert S14's to double-wishbone in order to do their full GT-R conversion. I talked with Geoff via email about what's required and if I could do it on a regular RWD S13. Full-Race's stuff if pretty sweet, non-invasive, and really not that hard to reproduce as a one-off. Sorry if I'm being a little vague, but some info was given confidentially. What they have released pics of is that they hack off the Nissan proprietary lower shock mount and weld on a universal. That lets them run OTS Koni 30-series stuff. The rest of the kit is basically OEM Nissan parts from Japanese models and the custom upper piece that holds the upper wishbone and shock.

[racepar1]

I am honestly considering using the z-32 front suspension on my car. It is difficult, but doable.

[Umai Kakudo]

I am honestly considering using the z-32 front suspension on my car. It is difficult, but doable.

The Skyline/Z32 suspension setup isn't all that great. Due to the packaging it is very difficult to lower that suspension design much without relocating most of the pivots. You'd be better off making a custom SLA setup like the Mustang guys do.

Up Garage (http://www.upgarageusa.com/) in Tacoma, WA has converted a few S13's to the R32 front suspension by grafting in the R32 strut towers and using the R32 control arms, uprights, and crossmember. Similar to the Full Race setup but was less hack and more OEM. They even did a RB30 with the full AWD R32 setup on one car. They had to do a lot of custom control arm relocation to get the car lowered significantly.

Back on Topic - With the OEM rubber or NISMO style bushings be sure to loosen all bolts and re-tighten them when changing ride height to allow them to center again instead of leaving them in a pre twisted state which will cause resistance and wear the bushing out faster. Any OEM Nissan rubber quickly turns to mush and starts having excessive compliance after tracking the car with an LSD especially on high mileage cars.

If you have subframe spacers and still have clunking coming from the rear chances your rear LCA bushings are shot and rocking forward and backward in the horizontal plane under power.

Eliminating stiction in all suspension pivots pays huge dividends in small bump response and overall suspension compliance. One 510 project my brother did where he replaced the LCA and TC rods with rod end units. He then modified Z31 uprights and crappy Megan Coilovers with 8KG rate springs (which is 4x's stiffer than should be used on a 510 with an L20!).

http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n74/amgvr4/Carpics465.jpg
http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n74/amgvr4/Carpics412.jpg

We thought it would be WAAAAY too stiff and require an immediate spring rate change to a lower rate but after driving it the suspension felt more supple and compliant than my S13 with Tein HE coilovers and 6KG front springs! The same damper/spring combination on a S14 with OEM LCA and rod end TC rods is also a lot harsher and less compliant.

It was then I realized the value of eliminating all stiction in all suspension joints. The only explanation why the 510 rode so smoothly is that all suspension joints were replaced with rod ends.

Also, there is no way to accurately or consistently corner weight a car that has any pivots with any kind of bushing in them as the stiction will cause the cornerweights to very every time the car is moved. It also eliminates all the deflection that is inherent in any deformable bushing and makes the car more predictable.

Rod-ends or whatever you want to call them will transfer a bit more NVH (not as bad as you'd expect) but the improvement in small bump compliance and reduction in deflection is well worth it. Just make sure to get high quality automotive spec rod-ends and replace them annually for safety.

[a_ahmed]

hey umai Kakudo, welcome to the forum, cool posts :)

[racepar1]

The nice thing about using the z-32 suspension is that I could use off the shelf arms rather than fabbing some up. Since I am custom mounting it anyways I can put the mounting points wherever I want, so that is not really an issue. I tend to agree however that a custom double a-arm set-up would be much better, but I would have to do a LOT of R&D to make it work properly with the s-13 rear suspension. The z shares pretty much the EXACT same rear suspension as the 240 so as long as I keep the angles correct it should work perfectly. I just need to do the research to see if the z suspension would really help enough to make it worth it. For sure a double wishbone/a-arm front suspension would make the car MUCH better, especially under braking, but will the z dual wishbone suspension do the job? I'm not really sure.

[Umai Kakudo]

Thanks for the welcome. veilside180sx invited me over from Northwest Nissans where I've been crusading to knock some sense into the uninformed masses. It's nice to know there are people who actually know what they are doing and are thinking out side the box to achieve true performance modifications.

As far as the Z23/R3x (The R32 - R34 Skyline suspension is the same design with just minor differences in the final spec. There were RWD version that have uprights/hubs without provision for the front AWD axles) suspension goes I don't know about the geometry either. That would require modeling the suspension and mapping out all the suspension geometry which would be pretty close to the same amount of work as designing a setup from scratch.

I know from looking at Up Garage that they spent a lot of time figuring out how to raise the LCA and upper control arm piviots to get decent roll centers with the car lowered enough to tuck the tires. There would also need to be some pretty hefty rework of the upper fender frame rail to clearance it for the Z32 upper control arms. Up Garage just had body shop graft in the R32 strut tower sheet metal to replace the S13 stuff. It can be done by guestimation but why attempt a project like this in the first place unless you know you are improving things and it will handle the way you intend it to by design?

If you don't want to get into fabricating a one off setup then using the Z32 stuff would save a lot of time and cost.

One thing is that the Z32 and S series front suspension from this era have a lot of anti-dive. Some drivers prefer zero or reduced anti-dive/squat setup for easier weight transfer control but that is mainly a driver preference thing.

It's been done before and is not impossible. You can call Doug at Up Garage and ask him about the improvements he saw with the conversion. He loves to talk ;)

[a_ahmed]

lol thats kind of funny, on some of the local forums i was a part of I became a legend :P I was given alot of ****, humilated, mocked, they even spread rumors and stupidity even brainwashing other new comers to their forum about me. So I became a joke to them, but it's all good :) I found some love on here and a multitude of other forums, but here man oh man I learn so much... lots of like-minded people, etc... it's really awesome. These forums are the shiznit.

Most of these guys are 18 year olds that got a 240 thinkin they are cool because of it heh... saw a movie or heard from a friend. Everything is about being JDM tyte

They'll all soon catch on :) GC Kits will spread like fire no doubt... JDM will fail :P I saw recently someone mention they are 'watching' this forum after someone suggested to get KYB AGX dampers or megan racing coilovers. Stating that GC Kits are becoming popular :P



Back on topic. I think it would be cool if someone came up with a kit to convert our cars to doublewishbone suspensions, however I think it's more than enough, it's just not ideal. I have no doubt it'll happen. If it can happen to american rust buckets from 50-60 years ago it can happen to 240s heh

[RBbugBITme]

On the topic of low friction bushing solutions, no one has mentioned anything about the ES reds vs. blacks. I've worked with carbon impregnated materials in industry a little and I bought the blacks because I'm sure the Cf is much lower than with the reds. Are there numbers available to cooraborate this translation to suspension bushings, of course not but the theory is sound.

Now I think someone mentioned that they'd rather stick with the stock rubber bushings and I'd like to disagree. Improving suspension compliance is the name of the game and overall I think stiffer poly bushings are overall winners compared to stock rubber. With the rubber you have the internal forces to deal with as well as greater deflection under load. With the poly stuff the deflection is minimal in comparison which is key and most importantly in my mind is when you are in the lower shock velocity range in roll/pitch the suspension movements themselves are large enough on our cars that most of the time is spent in the typically smaller kinetic Cf range thereby allowing the shock to do its job more effectively. With a rubber jobber, the same internal stresses are going to be there throughout the range of motion until you crack and tear them apart over time. Am I way off here? Where are the teflon lined poly bushings at?

Sorry for the resurrection, just sitting here with a foot injury and nothing to do.

[Def]

I have the black ES bushings - they suck. The grease gets pounded out and you cannot move the arms for crap(like couldn't move a toe rod leaning on it with my whole weight friction).

I agree - suspension compliance does suck... I think ridiculous friction from poly bushings sucks even more.

[RBbugBITme]

That bed eh? I guess my rant was for nothing and you've proven theory means jack. I'll be installing them in a week.

[90kacoupe]

how long have u been riding on ur bushing before all the grease was gone?? i wonder if it would be worth regreasing the center pins for a track day to loosen them back up..

[Def]

I installed the bushing well greased and 3-4 weeks later it was like that. Never installed the upright on the car. Used plenty of the supplied ES grease, which is very viscous.

[90kacoupe]

im kinda curious to take my traction rod loose and see how it feels.. my tension rod bushing are fine still.. after a while of driving.. it still moves up and down (not freely but not really stiff)

[Caithness]

Has anybody gone ahead and drilled and tapped suspension arms and bushings for grease fittings yet? I could use some guidance in putting this idea into practice, since it's something previously done by few to none.

I've got a set of ES front LCA and rear multilink polyurethane bushings- the old red ones. I picked it up cheap from a local shop that shut down. I already installed the set of steering rack bushings that also came with the kit and felt a great improvement from that, but those are static, and the suspension arm bushings are a whole different ballgame.

My factory bushings are all in bad shape, I can't afford full aftermarket multilink at this point (SPL tension rods broke my bank), and I already have the bushings. I want to install the bushings, but I want to make sure I'm not making things worse- with a set of grease fittings I could lubricate the bushings, say, once a month before each auto-x/HPDE event.

[racepar1]

I installed grease fittings on mine. I even have a bunch of pics and was planning on doing a write-up on it, but I totally forgot. I'll try to get it writtrn up by sunday. I think I lost the paper that I wrote down the drill bit size on :(, the good news is that if you get the drill size correct you don't have to tap any of the holes.

[RBbugBITme]

I haven't finished installing my suspension yet so I'm just guessing here... Could the inside surface of the mounts be in contact with the exposed ends of the bushings when the bolts are torqued down? If so, why not make a small spacer so only the metal sleeves are contacting the inside mount surfaces? You would probably have to drill out the holes that are there so you can use the same diameter bolts though.

Thoughts?

[racepar1]

I haven't finished installing my suspension yet so I'm just guessing here... Could the inside surface of the mounts be in contact with the exposed ends of the bushings when the bolts are torqued down? If so, why not make a small spacer so only the metal sleeves are contacting the inside mount surfaces? You would probably have to drill out the holes that are there so you can use the same diameter bolts though.

Thoughts?

I think that is a pretty bad idea as it would allow the bushing to move forward and backwards on the sleeve causing unwanted geometry changes. Also you would have to modify the mounting points to allow enough room for spacers, which would take a long time and a LOT of work. The exposed end of the bushing has to contact something on both sides in order to keep it centered, it might as well be the mount. The bottom line is that urethane sucks, but it is still better than the stock rubber bushings. The goal of all of us should be to upgrade to bearings as bearings are the best solution ans really the only solution that works 100% right.

[RBbugBITme]

I don't think you're getting what I'm saying. It certainly could not move with the spacers. Essentially its the same idea as bushings on a rod end which gives them the freedom to move around and centers the rod end in the mount. I just called it a spacer instead of a bushing because the poly stuff is already labeled a bushing and it would get confusing. There probably isn't enough space in the mounts for this anyways.

[Caithness]

To be honest, I'm confused about just exactly which part of the bushing has to be greased and which metal surface it has to rotate freely against. Is the inner metal sleeve rotating inside the bushing, and the sleeve-to-bushing surface needs greasing? Is the outer surface of the bushing rotating within the suspension arm (seems less likely to me) ? I haven't done enough with the rear multilink to get a good idea of just how it works. That will change soon since I have a whole mess of parts on the way and it all has to come out for the install- but I'd like to know what I'm getting into so I can be prepared and do the install and grease fittings all at once.

[EG8steve]

I find that alot of the arms avail have really cheap bearings, poorly planned dimensions for alignment adjustment, and questionable strength, i'm not sure whose adjustable spherical arms are quality.

For poly bushings- they require maintenence and will definitely wear out/bind if lube squeezes/washes away. But they are descent for large mounting bushings or simple pivot bushings.

Stock rubbers can be MUCH BETTER if you simply tighten all suspension pivot point bolts AT RIDE HEIGHT, meaning, have the car on level jack stands, with the wheel removed, and all suspension pivot bolts loosened, jack up the suspension until that corner lifts off of the jack stand, then tighten all pivot bolts- this way the bushings arent beyond twisted at normal ride height.

Sphericals are obivously the ideal solution for race cars, but for street cars not always. They will transmit evey bit of force and vibration into the chassis/subframe. In accidents more likely to break parts, bend the chassis/subframe, constant vibration can shake things loose (adjustable arms often shake themselves loose), and its hard to tell if there's something loose when the bearings make knocking noises all the time.

These days i recommend and use a mixed bag. depending on the situation.

[McCoy]

Stock rubbers can be MUCH BETTER if you simply tighten all suspension pivot point bolts AT RIDE HEIGHT, meaning, have the car on level jack stands, with the wheel removed, and all suspension pivot bolts loosened, jack up the suspension until that corner lifts off of the jack stand, then tighten all pivot bolts- this way the bushings arent beyond twisted at normal ride height.

lol, so I'm not the only one that does it this way... good to know. :)

[Longfellow]

Has anybody gone ahead and drilled and tapped suspension arms and bushings for grease fittings yet? I could use some guidance in putting this idea into practice, since it's something previously done by few to none.

I've got a set of ES front LCA and rear multilink polyurethane bushings- the old red ones. I picked it up cheap from a local shop that shut down. I already installed the set of steering rack bushings that also came with the kit and felt a great improvement from that, but those are static, and the suspension arm bushings are a whole different ballgame.

My factory bushings are all in bad shape, I can't afford full aftermarket multilink at this point (SPL tension rods broke my bank), and I already have the bushings. I want to install the bushings, but I want to make sure I'm not making things worse- with a set of grease fittings I could lubricate the bushings, say, once a month before each auto-x/HPDE event.

I'll be doing the grease fitting mod in the next week or two on the uprights and both F/R LCA's. I can help out if you need it.