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Guide to wishbone bushes


Frosty

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Thanks again, Frosty. I can find out the exact diameter when I have the Nylons at hand, so nothing to apologize for. Not having reaming facilities myself I think I will use a small honing device to get as close as possible to the desired fitment. But first of all I will get all wishbones powder coated, and then I can clean and hone to the correct sizes at the same time.

 

Sounds like a good plan. Also make sure that none of the welds stop the nylon from sitting flat against the tube. Grind them down if they are in the way. It's hard to explain what I mean, but you'll see exactly what I mean when you come to assemble them. The weld which joins the bush housings to the wishbone can often obstruct the nylon. Not a problem with rubber bushes, but it is a problem with nylon.

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My nylon bushes (IRS) car are probably up to around twelve thousand (road) miles now, over the past six or so years. No wear, no issues.

Pah! There was someone on here earlier this week with 80k on metalastic bushes!!!

And mine (albeit not Westfield) has done nearly 38k on poly bushes, with a tiny bit of track day action...(lol) again no issues....

Does make you wonder if nylon are worth the extra aggro, when most of us here probably couldn't tell the difference when fitted... ;-)

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Miles better than my original Metalstic, I can confirm that much...

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Grate post frosty, I'm looking to take my front wishbones off over the winter and bead blast them phosphate and powdercoat then. And change bushes, I was thinking about making a set of nylon ones up at work so the info is well handy, but as you've said the crush tube needs to be 0.1mm bigger than the overall length of the nylon, I'm guessing each pair of top hats must be made to to fit each tube of the wishbone as I doubt the tubes are cut to a tolerance of less 0.1mm and the same goes for the mounting brackets or are westfields made to tighten tolerances? Cheers Martin

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Because in my case the geo was redone afterwards, with different/better settings I'll ignore anything that could be down to that.

 

What was consistent both on the way to the geo (and afterwards), was the better feel of through the car, both through the steering wheel and the suspension, there's a much better feel of the road surface under you. It doesn't feel crashy or jarring, it doesn't bang through imperfections, yet you can feel the surface change beautifully if you run a tyre over just a regular painted line on the road. (As opposed to the deeply textured ones they use a lot now).

 

There's very little sensation of lost movement or isolation, yet it's not excessively harsh. (Except for those concrete sections on motorways, those are bad, I admit).

 

Like so much on these cars though, they're part of a whole raft of parts working together, each one adding its own little extra. So, the (relatively) rigidly mounted steering rack I've got, thanks to aly rack clamps with nylon spacers, also helps take that tiniest bit of steering slop out, and again helps feel and responsiveness. Plus, obviously, the fact it's a quick rack, helps. 

 

The intriguing part to me at least, is that you might think all that sort of stuff only made a difference on track or caning it. But it doesn't, even just pooling along on a nice day, you still get those sensations of absolutely feeling what the roads doing, and the sense of barely needing any great turn of the wheel to flow through a bend. It just feels "right" and makes a mundane trip to work feel special. 

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Grate post frosty, I'm looking to take my front wishbones off over the winter and bead blast them phosphate and powdercoat then. And change bushes, I was thinking about making a set of nylon ones up at work so the info is well handy, but as you've said the crush tube needs to be 0.1mm bigger than the overall length of the nylon, I'm guessing each pair of top hats must be made to to fit each tube of the wishbone as I doubt the tubes are cut to a tolerance of less 0.1mm and the same goes for the mounting brackets or are westfields made to tighten tolerances? Cheers Martin

 

The wishbone tubes are surprisingly accurate actually - or at least they were on my car. Obviously not so accurate that they are a perfect fit though. My process was this.

 

1) Measure crush tube.

2) Fit nylon inserts into wishbone, ensuring that they are a perfect fit and sit flat against the wishbone tube.

3) Measure the total length of the wishbone tube and nylon inserts.

4) Compare the measurements of the crush tube to the wishbone tube + nylon inserts.

5) Machine the bush inserts down so that the crush tube is exactly 0.2mm longer in total. This gives 0.1mm per end.

6) Fit the wishbone to the car with the bolts done up loosely. There should be zero resistance when moving the wishbone up and down. If you have resistance then something is wrong.

7) Torque up the wishbone bolts. You should have it so that the wishbone falls by itself, but with a little resistance.

 

The objective is to have the crush tube slightly long, so that the bush is loose enough that it doesn't add any rate to the wheel, but tight enough so that the wishbone has no loose play and cannot rattle.

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  • 1 year later...

What is the optimum torque setting for the fixing bolt through the crush tube with Nylon bushes?

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  • 4 weeks later...

Help please - can anyone provide the outside dimension (diameter) of the westfield metalistic bushes. I've just purchased rally design upper wide track wishbones (with in situ camber adjustment) to go with my old original westfield lower wide track wishbones. I'm perfectly happy with the metalistic bushes but are unsure if new ones supplied by westfield will fit the rally design upper wishbone. Thanks.

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What is the optimum torque setting for the fixing bolt through the crush tube with Nylon bushes?

 

think the factory setting is (off the top of my head) 30 or 35 ftlb, there shouldn't be a need to have an "optimum" torque as you're tightening up onto the spacer.... personally i just do them up tight enough, i guess the factory have a torque setting as it will be  health and safety style thing.

 

ie, there has to be a torque setting as it's a safety related issue if some numpty doesn't tighten them up enough.

 

In the same (sort of) vein as when a friend was using a hammer to shock a balljoint free (not on a westie, just a normal car), he asked me how to free it off and i said get a hammer and hit it (pointing out exactly where to hit it)

He got a small hammer and proceeded to "tap" the offending suspension part, after sniggering to myself i got a much bigger hammer out , moved him aside and with 2 whacks it was free.

 

Had i said, get the flippin big hammer and whack it (almost) as hard as you can, he might have done the job but as i didn't....  :rolleyes:

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I torqued them up to 25llbs. in the end, which is the same as metallastics in on Westfield-World.com.

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23.87mm wide. 34.85mm length. 37.74mm length inc inner crush tube. Know they are not metric, but that's what I got.

Westfield don't have any in stock at moment but I just bought 2 from eBay.

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Matjax do you have a link to them on Ebay? I need some before car goes back on the road.

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