Quick question: When was the last time you changed some suspension bushings? Most car owners know about the importance of good dampers, but bushings are often a neglected part of automotive maintenance. Due to age and use, these isolators might not exhibit any obvious problems, but could very much be past their prime.
Case in point: I was hearing an occasional metallic clunk in my Boxster when I drove with the top up. I couldn’t find play in anything with the car up on the lift, but still, the noise was there. It grew bloody irritating, but it didn’t take much diagnosis to figure out what it was. See, it was coming from the rear end, happened over sharp bumps, and occasionally under rapid drivetrain loading or unloading. I was looking for something that wasn’t supposed to move directly up and down or forward and backward, which meant the clunking component was likely bolted in on the vehicle’s y-axis.
Receipts for recent maintenance ruled out some common causes. The engine mounts and anti-roll bar drop links were new in 2021, and there’s no way in hell those would go bad so quickly, right? No, the obvious culprits were the bushings in the rear trailing arms that allow for movement on the body side. These are sealed spherical units, and as such, aren’t meant to be replaced by themselves, but rather as part of the entire arm they belong to. Also, the “bushings” are actually bearings, but in this application, they serve the same role.
Unfortunately, finding the correct replacement arms from a reputable brand that isn’t Porsche wasn’t obvious. I was able to source TRW replacements through RCLUB, the car club that I belong to, which has a wholesale account with business-to-business auto parts giant WorldPac. Poking around online might not render you so lucky. Oh, and pricing was on the mildly expensive side — I paid $667 including tax for two arms, which is reasonable, but it’s also just part of the costs of owning an older performance car.
Mercifully, installation was simple. I merely unscrewed the trailing edge of the undertray, gently relocated a fluid line, removed two bolts per side, and the arms just came out. Installation was more or less the reverse of removal, except I used a pole jack to torque each bolt at ride height, and used a wax pen to mark the bolts for a quick visual check of torque in the future. Since there are no facilities for adjusting alignment using these trailing arms, an alignment theoretically isn’t necessary after replacing these arms, and a quick set of measurements using string seems to prove my theory correct. The result? Not only was the occasional clunk gone, the rear end felt dramatically more planted.
So, when was the last time you checked your bushings? They’re often overlooked parts of suspension maintenance, but they matter a great deal when it comes to ride and handling.
(Photo credits: Porsche, Thomas Hundal, Amazon)
Ugh, the Lancer’s got some play in the suspension and it’s probably about that time. I need to crawl under there and start doing some poking.
2024 feels like it’s going to be the Year of Bushings for me. My Fiat Spider is getting rebuilt front suspension, steering and brakes, so all new front-end rubber there. I’ll do the rear end next year after the car’s driving. My BMW E12could use new control arm bushings and thrust rod bushings, and I have new ones to put in, but if I don’t get to it soon it’s not critical. My Saab has 40-year-old bushings but it’s good enough as it is so I’ll leave that to the next owner. The 911 has polybronze bushings and monoballs that just get a lube every year. SE-R got new front end rubber a few years ago.
Mine appear to be fine, but I’m watching my wife’s like a hawk, they all *look* like they’re on their last legs. I’m preparing myself for the looming hit of a full suspension rebuild. I’m still used to German parts cost, so hers are surprisingly cheap to replace, I just dread having to break all those rusty bolts loose while laying underneath.
Yes.
Winter 22-23 I dropped the entire front subframe on my 996, replaced all front and rear control arms, tie rods, drop links, etc., as well as new coilovers, and replaced all body bushings with polyurethane (the soft/road stuff, not the hard/track option; I’m not a savage.)
My daily driver Mazda? … uh, they seem to still be there. I think.
“It’s Wrenching Wednesday! Have You Checked Your Bushings Lately?”
Yes, I have!
Their all shot 😛
Got a front end bang? Check the struts first.
I had a loud rattlebang in my front end that new bushings, links or engine mounts could fix. Changing the struts did the trick but a few months later the noise was back. After much frustration I finally discovered the culprit: a loose center strut nut. It was tight enough at rest but with use it had backed off just enough such that on compression the nut unloaded from the plate and slammed back on rebound. The strut was new so a couple of turns with a wrench was all it took to fix. It was probably all that had been wrong with the originals. Somehow it continues to loosen up over time despite my use of blue locktite. My best guess of why is I have a Mazda 5 which shares that part with the lighter Mazda 3 and was designed for the 3. No big deal, now that I know the trick a few minutes of wrenching fixes the problem….for a while anyway.
Tried to replace the passenger lower control arm with integrated ball joint last night and failed horribly. The rear bolt just wouldn’t budge. Impacts, long breaker, days of penetrating oil on there before hand etc. Ended up dropping it off at a local shop so hopefully they get to it in the next couple of days.
Mustang I did the endlinks a few years ago, they were clunking something awful on bumps.
My old Protege5 went through endlinks at a rapid pace. Seemed to be a Mazda thing, a lot of people I knew changed them almost yearly.
I’ve never checked or worried about bushings since they haven’t caused problems in any of my shitboxes-they get a once over during yearly inspection…was usually just focused on keeping the cars running/basic stuff…though for a while now I’ve had a decent car and the 1st one w/ working A/C!
What a timely article. Just found out this morning my Jeep’s subframe bushings are toast.
I have never replaced a bushing on any of my 15+ previous cars (all used) as there were only a few that would benefit from them. The E36 M3, Integra GSR, and 5th gen Civic (with highly modified suspension) would have been the only ones to deserve them.
However, worn bushings were brought up by the dealer of my wife’s KIA just last week and we had them replaced. It has been owned since new and there is no deferred maintenance so it made sense.
Sway bar link bushings are sneaky little turds. Those boogers were the root cause of an entire year’s worth of a dealer chasing a groan/squeak in the suspension of my 2018 Kia Sorento, which started at 12,000 miles. It was under warranty, mind you. They were 100% convinced I had a bad strut, so they changed just that one “bad” one.
Unfortunately, they did it wrong and damaged the strut, and futzed the alignment too. They made good on it and replaced both when I drove right back to the dealer and talked with the service manager. He was like, who the hell replaces one strut? I just looked at him and kinda shrugged, thinking this question was rhetorical and not literal.
Once done, the front end still moaned and groaned, so I got some spray grease and did a quick spritz on the links and bushings, then drove it. Dead silent. Took it back and told them let’s do front sway bar bushings and that was that.
Struts were never the issue. But those should last a good while now.
LPT: After you pull the wheel, compress the suspension a bit with jack.
With the suspension at full extension, the spring is pushing your ball joints hard and you may not be able to notice the slop when trying to move it with your hands.
Do not underestimate this advise. We set up a gopro looking at the wheel travel of one of our lemons cars. We were shocked that the knuckle moved backwards about 1.5″ under heavy braking, camber changed about 5 degrees during a turn, etc. Granted this is on a cheap as shit gutted to hell race car that can sustain roughly 1.5g’s, but we thought it couldn’t be a problem as they were either fresh or replaced with poly ones 5+ years earlier.
BMW: this year rear, probably the fronts again after 7 years.
Caddy: Yes? I think I did them all since I bought it 5 years ago. Wait, no I haven’t. But, I do run over a bump on my road every morning and the same two bushings squeak. I have come to accept it and play along.
Pickup: lol
I checked my bushings yesterday. I have a clunk in my new project car that appears to be the lower control arm bushing. I will be replacing the lower and upper control arms (oddly, new arms were cheaper than just the bushings), sway bar end links, front shocks, and tie rod ends (possibly) this weekend. I replaced the entire rear suspension two weekends ago, and luckily the body mounts and engine mounts are all good, so the only thing remaining after the whole new front suspension is the transmission mount.
When the rear leaf spring suspension bushings were worn out in my ’64 F100 coach-built crewcab, taking a corner was an experience as the whole body shifted at each turn. Fun times!
Because of the way the cab was added onto to create the second row of seats, the rear corners of the under are of the body were directly in the path of the bushing bolt heads. They had to bash in the body to get to the bolts to remove them. Handling was much better.
You can ask Mercedes when I changes some bushings last, because she was there helping. My ’74 Buick Apollo now has all new bushings, ball joints, tie rods, and shocks in the rear end after a weekend long thrashing session a few weeks ago. I’ve been slowly working on the rear end bushings and shocks ever since. Last time I drove that car, you could feel the rear end moving around a significant amount on any kind of curve. I look forward to it handling less like a bag of ball bearings.
You just drop that bit of cool on us without any further explanation?! Mercedes makes housecalls now, presumably if it’s a rare funky vehicle like a Buick Apollo?? 🙂
I’ve known her since she only owned one car, so no I don’t think she makes house calls for just anybody.
Yes, just checked all of them on the 5.9, ordering replacements today. Ball joints, tie rods, shocks, all of them are pretty much shot.
As a matter of fact, yes. A couple months ago I replaced pretty much the entire front suspension on my 2004 Toyota Sequoia, including all the bushings. I even pressed out/in new steering rack bushings.
And in the course of trying to diagnose a rear axle clunk on my 1985 Ford LTD (which turned out to be loose driveshaft bolts – I last touched them 2 years ago!) I noticed my rear upper control arm bushings are starting to crack, but not enough to care yet.
Uh, never. My mechanics say they glance over everything at the oil changes, and I at least trust them to not miss a chance to get my money, so it’s actually comforting the several times they’ve said “nah, [x part] looks fine.”
For my ’97 Econoline and now my 2012 Prius v I can’t say I’ve ever felt suspension problems, aside from replacing the front shocks on the van a couple times.
Same here, not a routine replacement. Check over and when replacing shocks. Otherwise I have a few other things to fix.
Do shift linkage bushings count?
If so, why yes, and wow what a slog it’s been.
My 25 year old 911’s shifter suddenly went completely loose. As in, unconnected to anything.
Long story short, its various bushings had turned the consistency of candle wax and then disintegrated.
I replaced all of them that were bad (accessing them was a pain per usual Porsche), but I then made the idiotic mistake of not heeding the classic wrenching wisdom of “when one of something that exists in pairs is bad, check the other.”
So I’m currently waiting on my friends at Pelican to send me another ball cup bushing so I can complete the job in the front and happily motor once again. Or at least not face the prospect of once again having to remove the 20+ nuts to get the center under-car guard off. Which is only one of the under-car guards it has.
I’ve definitely had few in garbage old cars that ended up splitting the rubber completely so the center pin could press it out of the way and hit mount metal itself. Made for some scary drives home after buying a new clapped out but runner/driver.
Every used car I buy comes with completely thrashed sway bar links. It doesn’t seem like anyone ever thinks about those.
They’re usually the first to go, too.
I finally moved the Z4 to set up for that that unfinished work from *mumblemumble*monthsago, and of course, naturally, why wouldn’t there be, coolant spewing out of an as-yet undiagnosed location.So, shit, I guess I’ll have a look at the bushings while I’m in there.
One day this car will drive again, dammit.
Ah yes. Never neglect your radiator bushings.
Hahaha, thank you for seizing so expertly on my poor phrasing. I’ll have to move the turbo encabulator to get a good look.
Just be careful with the waneshaft or you’ll get side fumbling when you reinstall it.