82 SC sqeaky poly bushings help with next steps please

[Kerschbaumer]

Bought this car a year ago from Florida. PO had bunch of tasteful (I thought) updates to the otherwise stock car primarily to do with suspension. 22/29mm torsion bars, turbo tie rods, Carrera brakes, bolt in roll cage, RS door panels & carpet, monoball tower strut, adjustable spring plates/lowered to Euro spec and Poly-Graphite bushings through out.

The bushings are pretty loud. PO said he would re/re w stock rubber to quiet things. I like the fact that the car rides hard and tight and my question to the group is what would you recommend I take to get rid of the noise keeping in mind the context of the way the car is set up? Is going to stock or Elephant Racing rubber a step backwards? or should I spring for ER poly bronze or should I just grease up the existing poly bushings? I dont race but do attend some autocross/DE events, and get out of bed for the odd dawn patrol missions on our local twisties (Duffey lake road)

I try to do as much of the work on the car myself, am noobish but havent blown anything up yet. Is greasing a chronic PITA and for the price of bushings should I just rip em out and start with something that wont bug me every year? I read up much as I could on the bushing debate but am most concerned of my choices given the context of the mods already in place.

Thanks in advance

[tirwin]

Beautiful car! It looks almost identical to my '83 so I am biased. . Sounds like a bunch of great mods.

ER polybronze is a popular choice. I am installing those on the rear of my car right now and using Chuck's Spherical bushings on the front control arms. The polybronze require that you re-grease every 3k miles. There is a nipple for the inner and outer bearings to give a squirt with a gun. Do your current bushings have a way to grease them? That might be all that is needed. I don't know anything about poly-graphite but I can only say good things about Chuck Moreland at ER.

If you want to read more about the ER stuff do an advanced search and look for Craig_D's suspension thread. He did a fantastic job of documenting his suspension change.

[Kerschbaumer]

I havent seen a zirk for squirtin on my car but will take a good hard look. If I do decide to change things I wonder how hard it is to remove the PU busings - or should they be pretty straight forward?

[Craig_D]

Poly bushings squeak eventually, period. The difference between rubber and poly, is that the rubber bushings twist, and poly doesn't so the components attached to the poly bushing must slide and creates heat (eventually burning out any lubrication), and squeak.

I have ER Poly Bronze bushings on my spring plates in my '78 SC and they make no noise at all. You do have to grease them (I do a few times a season), but it's a very easy 5 minute job and they keep the suspension tight and predictable. I love em.

I have ER rubber bushings in my front control arms, and will eventually switch them over to Poly Bronze in the near future.

Pay attention to prepping the torsion tube/spring plate holes when mounting the ER PolyBronze, but after that, they should be quiet and very nice.

Hope that helps.

Cheers - Craig_D

PS: Here's a link to my suspension rebuild thread, which covers the entire suspension, along with the ER PB installation: '78 SC Elephant Racing Suspension Upgrade

[Kerschbaumer]

Spring has sprung early here so I am thinking replacement may be a project for next winter. In the short term - what is involved with lubing the poly bushings to get me through the year without going squeaking mad? If I dont have zirks, am I already half way toward replacement just to get the grease in or is there some way of penetrating things easily for a short term fix?

[gtc]

It's going to be a fair amount of work to properly clean and grease them without zerk fittings. The front two would be easy, but the back two are a bit more involved.
Replacing with rubber bushings is a weekend project, and not too hard if you have the elephant installation tools. There are plenty of threads on the subject here, and Elephant has an excellent instruction PDF posted on their website also.