Awesome new clunks and noises.

[Eidolon]

Not the first time I've been wrong about a debug. Glad you got it fixed!

It does make it easier to drop in poly bushings in the front arms when you do the coilovers, too. I've been happy with my BMR pieces. Just a little grease on install and they've been nice and silent for me, surprisingly enough for poly. You can ask around to make sure that's the general experience.

But with the stock bushings, they're actually held in tension in place by the bolts through the front subframe. So you'll need to loosen them and then retighten them once the coilovers settle, what the Pedders instructions call "indexing" or "clocking" the bushings. Poly bushings don't lock into place in the same way and are always free-spinning, so there's no need to do the same.

Not necessary, though. I believe Grant (I12XLR8) is running the stock bushings with BC Coilovers without issues, and he tracks his car left and right.

EDIT: Of course now I can't actually find the installation instructions I'm thinking of. So... just take my post with an enormous grain of salt.

[oesman]

Taking about 1/8 of an inch out of the k-member where the header was rattling on it fixed the rest of my noises. I used a grinder to cut a little piece off and then an air file to file it down clean. Followed up with some paint to prevent rusting.

@Eidolon

All input is always welcome . I did get a bunch of bushings and have some more on order with BMR. The BMR poly sway bar bushings have been pretty quiet for me, but sometimes after a bunch of car washes I have to re-lube (few times a year) so we'll see about the other poly bushings. Or they squeak and make grunting sounds lol. I would probably at the least ensure proper torque after a shake down of the suspension, but I'll have to see on the instructions as far as clocking the poly bushings.

[Eidolon]

I did get a bunch of bushings and have some more on order with BMR. The BMR poly sway bar bushings have been pretty quiet for me, but sometimes after a bunch of car washes I have to re-lube (few times a year) so we'll see about the other poly bushings. Or they squeak and make grunting sounds lol. I would probably at the least ensure proper torque after a shake down of the suspension, but I'll have to see on the instructions as far as clocking the poly bushings.

I had the same problem with the BMR poly bushings for the sway bar. They'd squeak, I'd grease them, and after a few months they'd start squeaking again. Switching up the grease I used helped. The Teflon-based Superlube they specify isn't bad, but it's not sticky enough to really stay in the bushing. Others have had good luck with Green Grease, I believe, and I've personally found Redline's CV-2 works well at the cost of smelling like gear lube. Switching to Redline CV-2 and torturing the suspension with a few HPDE's seems to have worked them out well enough to where I haven't heard a sway bar creak, now, in... a year? Occasionally I'll shoot a little grease into the front bushings, just to keep them lubed. I should probably do the rears soon, but that means removing the bar.

As for the front arms, the BMR poly bushings - specifically, for the radius rods and control arms - don't require clocking, which makes them easier to deal with when changing the ride height of the car.

The issue is that the stock arms use rubber bushings that don't rotate freely. Rather, when the bolts that hold them into the front cradle/subframe are tightened, the metal tabs that surround the bushings squeeze and lock them into place. So when the arm displaces from the position it was at when those bolts were tightened, the rubber bushing actually stretches and wants to pull the arm back to that default position. That's why you'll occasionally read old stories of owners who had the control arms replaced and the dealer incorrectly torqued them while the car was in the air, resulting in the ride height being off. Because they torqued the bolts holding the arms in when the car was in the air, the bushings were locked into place with the arms at full droop. The result is that, when they set the car back down, those bushings want to return the arms back to that full droop position. In combination with the usual spring tension, that means the ride height is a bit higher.

If you replace the arms yourself at some point, you'll also run into this. You can remove the nuts and hammer the studs for the arms out of the front knuckle, but until you loosen the bolts that connect them to the front cradle/subframe, they actually won't fall out or move.

So the trick is, if you don't replace the control arm bushings with poly when you put in the coilovers, loosen the control arm bolts when you set the car down with the lower ride height, then tighten them down. Essentially, they just need to be re-tightened with the suspension loaded. You can do this on ramps, too. Otherwise, you've got permanent tension on the stock rubber bushings, which can cause them to wear out prematurely.

If you do decide to replace them with poly, they don't have the same issue because the poly aren't locked into place. They're allowed to spin freely, so the position of the arm when you torque the bolts doesn't matter at all. In my case, I've got the BMR bushings I linked you to above, and I've been perfectly happy with them. They're still as tight as the day I got them, even after putting them through an HPDE. That's more than I could say about Spohn's poly bushings. The BMR poly bushings also haven't squeaked for me, luckily.

[oesman]

Eidolon,

Thanks for the info on the poly bushings. This is very helpful, I truly appreciate the insight. I've been working on the car and the bushings aren't too bad to install. I actually had to burn a few factory ones out :-/, kind of ghetto I know but man it was 100x easier, quick blast of heat and a swift smack of the mallet and they're flying off. I think that's how I'm doing em from now on whenever removing factory rubber bushings, it's just way too easy.

Speaking of dealer fuckups. No idea how this happened or why they did this. But it seems when my car was in their shop the other day they took the rear sway bar off. No idea why. They did not install it correctly and it smacked my LCAs putting two dents into both LCAs. I'm still scratching my head as to why/how that happened. I noticed it when I was putting load on the rear suspension while the car was in the air, in order to take the trailing arm off and saw that the sway bar was almost hitting the LCA, looked closer saw the LCA was dented and that's why it doesn't hit it now. Plus they re-installed the bar on the softest setting, been wondering why I'm under-steering the last few days with the front bar on hardest and the rear on softest (and installed wrong)........

[-Ray-]

Got it all fixed now?

[oesman]

For the most part. Still need to drop it off at G-Force to do cradle inserts and such. Don't feel like dropping the cradle while on my back. I'm going to install BMR end links for the rear sway which I already have, the stock endlinks seem damaged now from the improper sway bar position. Plus I need to spray some paint on the dents on the LCAs so they don't rust .



Here is a nice new bushing though: