Talk to me about rear trailing arm bushings...
 

This is an illustration of the rear trailing arm bushing.

http://www.pelicanparts.com/catalog/...rts/5_1.2c.gif

I understand they are a heifer to r/r. Without jacking the car up to examine them, is there a way to tell through the car's handling whether or not these bushings are good or bad? Do they have more of a propensity to go bad than other suspension bushings? Is it imperative to change these bushings when freshing up a suspension?

Thank you.
SmileWavy

Hi, my car has just gone in to have one of these done, the shop doing the work is charging me 3 hours to replace it.

The problem came to light not long after I bought the car, when I discovered it would (just slightly) jink to the left in the middle of a right-hand bend. The PPI did not pick this up.

We put it up on a ramp and you could see immediately that the offside (right) bush was worn, looked very different to the other side. The guys looked at the spring plate bushes and the anti-roll bar (sway bar) links etc and said they were all fine and would not need replacing.

If you are redoing your back end, they have to be on the list of things to change, might as well do them while everything is apart.

3 hours to replace? that's not bad considering the bold of the trailing arm doesn't come out with the tranny in the car...

If your torsion tube has been -notched- either by the factory or a good mechanic, it should come out without a tranny/engine drop. Later cars were notched from the factory. The notch is simply a dent in the right place that allows you to pull the bolt out with the tranny in place. This has not been done on my '72. :(

well, when i replaced mine, i already had done my first drop
so the second time around , i managed to do it in 2.5 hours

but i already has the rest of the arm and brake calipers loose the evening before.. saved some time there

I would consider these last in the order of needed replacement. The biggest advantage of "monoball" type of replacements is the ease of adjusting the trailing arms in different alignment settings, especially when adding negative camber. The originals will fight this, and don't even consider polyurethane materials. The actually amount of different road feel is subjective. I recently did mine on a G50 car and have driven my brothers 87 with them replaced for a comparision and could not feel any harsher ride deterioration.