Solid Bushings

[chadswe4]

Does anyone know who make solid bushings for the front and rear for the G body?( Upper and lower control arms front and rear)

Thanks
Chad

 

[novaderrik]

Global West makes the Del-A-Lum bushings, and most circle track racecar supply places can hook you up with true solid aluminum bushings.
but you don't want solid bushings in the upper rear links- it will just bind the suspension up and cause all sorts of other problems.
hell, i don't think Global West even sells upper Del-A-Lum bushings for the rear.

 

[chadswe4]

Thanks for the info but I'm going to use solid bushings so they won't bind like polys do.
Chad

 

[Turbo6inKY]

Originally posted by chadswe4
Thanks for the info but I'm going to use solid bushings so they won't bind like polys do.
Chad

Knock knock?

Solid bushings would bind WORSE. In fact, you'd probably quickly rip the control arm mounts off the bottom of the car or the axle, if you hadn't spun off into a ditch first.

Rubber or spherical bearings in the rear control arms. Poly, del-a-lum, or steel everywhere else.

 

[MaxVO2]

For a street car, the solid bushings on the rear control arms will cause problems, especially on the top rear arms.. You might be able to get by with them on the bottoms if you reinforce the mounting brackets with boiler plate. The mounting holes should be checked periodically for elongation and stress cracks. When going over bumps, and taking turns, the rear control arm bushings are subject to a combination of angular twist and rotational movements - motions that cause binding and other problems when solid bushings are used. A good quality spherical bearing setup, or Del-alum type bushing would work better for a street driven car.

If you still have your heart set on solid control arm bushings, I believe that Competition Engineering still makes them in anodized aluminum for our cars rear control arms. They might still be available from Jegs or Summit for about $60 or so per set of 4 to fit our cars. I have them on a set of GM G body control arms for a tractor pull application that only goes in a straight line. They work great for that.

I'll look up the part # for them if you can't find them, and still want them.

Billy
Montgomery Village, MD

 

[UNGN]

We put UB machine lower solids in the Front of our 2+2 and the steering response is excellent. We don't really drive it in the rain, so I don't know how long they would last on a daily driver, but I was really impressed with the difference in turn in and feel taking corners at 140+.

 

[novaderrik]

the 4 link rear suspension that is under our cars is a compromise- mostly dictated by what is cheapest to make and fits in the car without cutting into the interior room.
the ideal 4 link setup would have all 4 links the same length and running parallel to each other to prevent binding- but would need a member to control side to side movement (that is what a panhard bar does) but if you take 10 seconds to look at the rear suspension in your Regal, you will see that it is just about as far from optimum as you can get. the outer lower arms have pretty good geometry- they run almost straight forward and are pretty long- but the uppers are too short (to not portrude into the rear seat) and kicked out from the rear axle housing at sharp angles to locate the rear axle side-to-side without needing a panhard bar. the rubber bushings on those upper arms take a beating beacuse they are almost always in a state of bind unless the car is at rest and sitting at the factory engineered ride height.
ever notice that on the GNX the engineers got rid of the upper links altogether and replaced them with a single longer center mounted arm down low and a panhard bar? that is the single biggest improvement they made to those cars, but it was expensive to do and harder to package an exhaust system around it. what they ended up with was a rear suspension very similar to an 82-02 Camaro/Firebird, but with a shorter torque arm.
a killer setup to try out would be a 3 link like on the new Mustangs- but with the upper arm the same length as the lowers. put a spherical bearing in one end, and a Del-A-Lum bushing in the other- and do the same on the loser outer arms- with the longest panhard bar you can get under the car. you'd have a race car rear suspension with zero bind thru all suspension movement, as well as zero pinion angle change.