monroepaul

Based on previous responses I received from this forum. The consensus was that if I want to eliminate body roll on the track to add T1 sway bars and polyurethane bushings for my 02 Z06 for HPDEs. I already purchased the T! sway bars but I'm not sure where to buy the polyurethane bushings and if there is any drawback from adding them to my streetcar?

thanks in advance Paul

rudyarias

If you are using it as a daily driver. You will notice the ride will be much stiffer with the Polyurethane busings than just staying with the T1 sway bars. I personally do not experience any body roll issues with the T1 sway bars, '04 shocks and OEM springs.

gkmccready

I think Pfadt and VBP are the only games in town for Poly bushings... everybody else seems to sell one of those two.

http://www.pfadtracing.com/products/...&search=&page=
http://www.vbandp.com/detail.aspx?ID=770

I can't give you any drawbacks for the street, I don't have the bushings, but they're on my list of things to do as the deflection in the stock bushings is supposed to really mess with the alignment, especially in the rear under power. So much so that you can run a lot less rear toe-in with the poly bushings... might actually help tire wear on the street!

John Shiels

VBP has worked well for me.

Todd Z

Rudy,

Push the car harder!

Todd

NoOne

I have the Pfadt bushing set and the ride quality difference was no where near as "bad" as I thought it was going to be.

More taut and firm but not jarring.

Grease the hell out of them and go for it.

ghoffman

I agree, I have the Pfadt bushings and am very happy with them.

Jason

Me too.

If you buy, be sure and buy the ones that come with the steel sleeve already installed. You do not want to try to remove your sleeves from your stock bushings. Take my word for it.

NoOne

I believe the bushings themselves are all the same regardless of who you order them from.

Energy Suspension pieces...the Pfadt's come with some very nice machined inserts and dog bones. The fit was perfect all the way around. VBP did have a problem with interference in the front on some cars. Not sure if they fixed it. Do a search and you'll find the info. I imagine they addressed it by now.

Also, don't reuse your stock pieces...I tried that, not worth the effort. I ended up destroying one of my pieces and that resulted in me going with the Pfadt pieces.

rustyguns

this is what i am hoping for !

rustyguns

hehehe

96CollectorSport

I've installed both the Phadt and the VB&P bushings, the only differance I see is that Phadt includes a bushing for the lower rear shock mount, which is nice for anyone using coil overs.
Either kit will help keep your alignment settings where you put them instead of moving under load.

95jersey

I had VBP through my 01 Z at every possible place and it definately felt great, then came the noise. If you are just talking about sway bar bushing, then no big deal, but if you are talking about control arms and such, they will creak, crack and moan after about 6 months.

So, are they a good track mod? Definately

But, if you plan on reselling the car someday as a street car, you may want to reconsider this mod. The bang for the buck is not that high, and the noise IS.

I luckily found a person who understood the benefit of this mod when selling my car, but to 99% of the Corvette world, they will step in your car and then run like hell thinking the car is a bucket of bolts.

Just another point of view. If the car is dedicated track, then you have you answer. If you plan on selling the car as a normal vette someday, you will be fustrated down the road.

0Randy@DRM

We run the Prothane bushings. They are cheap and work good. But like NoOne knowns they are more work. But once installed you have a solid feeling and no noise!

Randy

Jason

Spray them with WD40 every once in awhile. I've been doing that all my life with older cars to quiet down squeaking bushings. Works for awhile, then do it again.

95jersey

I actually got a dealer commercial quality syth lubricant (it was so loud, they felt bad for me and gave it to me!), and it could not penetrate the lube the inside of the control arms. I got use to it, but in the back of my mind, I always worried about what was going to happen when I sell the car. Luckily for me, found a young guy who understood what value the bushing brought and it was not an issue, but I would say 99% of typical Corvette owners outside the roadrace forum would not agree. Again, it is a great performance mod, but unlike a race seat or exhaust, it is pretty much unreversable as you not going to change all your bushing out twice.

Jason

Do what I did.

Bought my replacement, an 02 Z, before selling the vert, then swapped a-arms, spindles, the whole 9 yards, from car to car before selling the vert. I figued that would be easier than trying to swap just the bushings.

ghoffman

I have to say that I have had no noise (yet) but I made sure to install them with lots of care and lube. In addition, the Pfadt bushings are the only ones I have seen that have internal longitudinal grooves to contain the grease, similar to the pic below. This is a notional drawing (not a real Pfadt bushing, but I did a quicky drawing to show what the grooves look like).

rfn026

I got a big surprise recently when I took the rear suspension apart on my C4 track car. I had been having camber problems - the camber was changing all the time - and I found all of my poly bushings were out of round.

These Energy Suspension bushings had actually ovalized. These bushings were the ones on the rear links that tie the rear end to the body (four of them).

I've had them in the car for five years now but I was still surprised that they actually wore out much quicker than the original stock bushings. You can bet I'm going to see what other bushings have gone to hell in the past few seasons,

Just my way of saying - Don't believe the lifetime hype. These suckers seem go bad faster than the stock bushings. Maybe GM really isn't stupid. Ya think?


Richard Newton

Autocross Performance Handbook

101 Projects for Your Corvette 1984-1996

0Randy@DRM

The stock bushings twist when the part is under high forces. The poly is much stiffer and doesn't twist it wears.

Randy