UGH - Sway Bar Outer Bushing Replacement
 

I swear, if it's not one thing, it's another. I just noticed that one of my outer sway bar bushings is completely gone! As in no longer there. Since this is my daily driver, i need to get this fixed ASAP. Of course Autozone doesn't have em. But is there a bushing I can get for another vehicle like a VW or Audi, something that a local parts store would have?

What year is your car and what model?

84 944. Its listed under my screen name ;)

171 411 314 - $2.50 brand new from Porsche.

Is that the dealership price? I was hoping to find some locally. Im also going to need to get the bolt and washer as those are missing too. Damn, this thing is just falling apart. I guess ill lookall that stuff up tomorrow. Might as well upgrade the bushings while I'm at it.

What is the diameter of the sway bar anyway? I'm sure its stock.

I'm guessing its a bad idea to drive with that outer bushing gone. :rolleyes:

Upgrade? Use the OEM rubber bushings, they're cheap. IIRC the bolts use lock nuts so order new hardware as well. I replaced most my hardware when I changed sways. Also get new bushings that connect sway to control arm. Also cheap.

Also, it's not an emergency part. Idk what damage will occur driving as is but it would take 15 minutes to jack the car up and just remove the bar. The car drives fine without it for daily purposes.

Thanks Gaw. I'm not concerned about the price so much. It was on my list of things to do anyway. I can't find that nut and washer in the Pelican catalog though. Also do you happen to know the diameter of the swaybar? Again, I believe its just stock. I don't have a caliper to measure it.

Since my commute is 100 miles each day round trip, I'm not going to risk any damage.

Almost certainly 23.5 mm. You will be able to find the parts numbers for the hardware in the Porsche parts catalog. I'd get them for you but I'm working. However it might be easier to get basic nuts and bolts at a local parts store. Depends on what you get.

To Nutless_neo,

You may want to measure the bar with a caliper as there were, I believe, several sizes available. My 84 has the 25 mm bar. They are a bugger to put on and make sure you take a picture prior to replacing the bushings or you may end up putting them on backwards (ask me how I know...). Since I utilize this site almost daily, I try to purchase as many parts from Pelican Parts as possible; they do offer overnight shipping. Good luck!

Hopefully the link below will take you to the 1982 - 1985 Porsche Parts Katalog to look up the part numbers you need.

http://www.porsche.com/all/media/pdf/originalparts/en/E_944_85_KATALOG.pdf

Cheers,
Larry

How did you find that catalog on the Porsche site? I need one for the 84 944

Thanks for the tip. It looks like I just may have to get a caliper because I think I'm just going to upgrade the entire assembly with stronger brackets and of course the poly bushings.

Use rubber bushings :)

Why's that? I've always had great results with Polyurethane bushings.

Same reason Porsche used them, they're forgiving and absorb the pain!

I was in a similar situation a few years back. Had a power steering line leak and it soaked the bushings over time and completely destroyed them. While waiting for the parts in the mail, it drove fine without the sway bar (but of course I wasn't going to do any really spirited driving until then) :)

This was how I found out my car had the M030 suspension package as the bushings had numbers beginning with 951...nice!

Which is another reason to get polyurethane bushings. They won't degrade being soaked in oil, grease or whatever.

I hate not driving my car :( but since I'll be taking the other nut off to get a match at the hardware store, I'm just not going to risk driving it. I have a 5 mile twisty road from my house to the highway as well as another 45 miles to work after that. I got a caliper to measure the swaybar so I can at least order the bushings when I get home tonight. Sucks that it's so cold outside. I hate the cold!:mad:

All my bushings said 951. As well :o

Poly bushings are nice for the reason that they last, firm things up if you want that, but will transfer road noise, youneed to constantly relube them or they will squeak.

When I said squeak, I actually mean grab and actually lose some of the effectiveness of the bushing. The bar should be able to rotate smoothly through the bushing, like a bearing.
Softer rubber actually deforms to accomplish this, but harder bushings such as poly and delrin need to be lubed.

Since you daily drive like I do, I suggest the OEM bushings! They're nice, last a while, quiet. Not hard to replace if needed. Inexpensive.

I replaced mine this past summer with the standard bushings that PP offers. Why do you ask? Well, I don't race her and she tracks very well in stock trim, just as the good Dr. P. ordered. Since I repaired my power steering pump (best $20.00 ever spent), no leaks = no premature rubber degradation.

As for the caliper, any digital unit will work fine. Mitutoyo makes a very nice unit; I've had my set over 15 years with no issues.

Does anyone know the actual measurements of the outer sway bar bushing? I know my inner diameter is 14mm and I think the outer diameter is 35mm. It's kinda hard to tell with the caliper I'm using, which looks like 30-31mm, so I used a ruler and it says 35mm. I can't measure the old bushing because it disappeared. So I'm measuring the bracket opening.

Use the part number off the bushing on the other side :)

Yeah, I thought about that, but I was hoping to avoid taking the other bracket off. Having one side loose is bad enough ;) And I just don't have enough time in the day to work on my car during the week. By the time I get home, it's dark and too cold to work. No, I don't have a garage. :(

The part number is on the 'sidewall' of the outside of the edge of the bushing, you should be able to see it without doing anything but walking up to it!

Oh, I did not know that :) Thanks.

Yep :) I'm still not sure what size of sway bar was on my car, my bushings said 951.. at any rate I went up to 968 sways

I have polyurethane stabilizer bushings front and rear from energy suspension on my ford explorer. They are 10 years old and still give the beast a solid and tight feel.

I stayed with oem rubber on both porsches and am happy. At the time I didn't think poly was a bad idea for the porsche but i wasn't able to find them. The 944 has a round recess in the control arm for the sway bar bushing instead of a flat surface. This my be the reason the harder bushings squeak.

where bushings squeak is usually at the center bushings as the sway bar rotates inside the bushing. rubber has some give to it, so it generally doesn't do that.

i've had quite a few polyurethane bushings squeak over the years. the only ones i've had success with had grease fittings.

delrin is supposed to be self lubricating, but the design of ours is such that they wear out in oblong fashion if they are not greased. this causes them to make noise, but the noise is more of a "knock" than a squeak. if you do grease them, then the bar moves left to right, unless you put some form of shaft collar on the sway bar, to prevent that.

all that said, there is not a lot of performance gain from non-rubber bushings. you get a little, but not nearly as much as the next size up sway bar, and you usually spend more on the bushings than finding a used sway bar, which often comes with its own bushings.

Well considering the ***** of a time I am having finding any 14mm poly bushings for my sway bar, I just may have to go with rubber, which is just not what I want. Any part is going to have an upside and a downside, its just a matter of what you want and why. I do prefer polys because they last longer and wont fall apart at the first sign of grease, dirt or oil - which is why I'm having to replace my bushings in the first place. I also prefer polys for the stiffness and overall performance handling because I do drive my cars hard.

I contacted Pelican parts support about their poly bushing but they were no help at all. I'm tempted to just buy it anyway along with the rubber ones and just return the polys if they don't fit.

uh- fix the leak that is causing your problem with rubber bushings???

i just pulled a set of original 968 swaybars and bushings out of a car here. the bushings still looked great and were still supple. there is no reason that rubber would not serve you very well for a long time, as long as you don't have leaks. but then, you should not be driving the car with leaks anyway.

again, you would be far better off from a performance standpoint of replacing the sway bar with a larger one. the gain you get from bushing stiffness is very minimal. you can do the math, but you are looking at roughly 2-3% for poly, and maybe 5% for delrin. it's just not much. jumping up one size in swaybar is more like 20% per size.

Yes well, I can't very well walk the 50 miles each way to work now, can I? ;) One thing at a time my fellow Porschite. Given that I don't get home until it's dark out, freezing cold and I don't have a garage, well some things just have to wait til the weekend. Thankfully, it's not a horrendous leak, but a leak just the same. I'll be cleaning off that side of the undercarriage and engine this weekend and try and track it down. It looks to be coming from somewhere around the oil filter but not the filter itself, I don't think. There is no oil on top of the engine or on the side, just on the bottom. Believe me, I don't like the idea of leaking oil but there just aren't enough hours in the day.

As for a larger sway bar - that sounds like a good idea - but just not an expense I can incur at the moment. I just need to get this stupid bushing and be done with it. This is so ridiculous something so simple should be so hard.

take it to a shop and rent a car for a day. enterprise is cheap and delivers. for a couple hundred bucks, you're done, without injury, or any impact on your day.

this car is going to cost you money every year, and it won't get better as it gets older either. i would never depend on a porsche, especially an older one, as my only vehicle. that's just not smart. if this is an issue, you need a camry.

Thanks for the advice, but I'm not getting a Camry lol or any other econobox. I see no problems in depending on my car for DD, it's served me well so far. Besides if it absolutely really came down to it and I couldn't drive it, I have 3 other vehicles to choose from, including my fav - my Ninja ZX6R :D it's just too damn cold to ride right now.

Plus you need a credit card to rent a car and I don't do credit cards. And I don't let anyone else work on my vehicles. Any car is going to cost money every year.

One of the sway bar end bushings was missing when I got my car. It had probably been that way for a year or two. After driving the car for a few months I finally got around to ordering one. It was a pain to put on - seemed like the bushing bore was just too small. Anyway, there's no reason to stress about it or rent another car because of it.

Agreed. It's been driving fine without it and I haven't noticed any difference in performance with it gone. It's not like I'm going to leave it like that but I like my car and prefer driving it over the other vehicle choices I have - a 1/2 pickup with a 350 or a KIA SUV - both of which suck up way more gas than my 944. Of course, I would much rather be riding my Ninja, but as I said, it's too cold for that - even with heated jacket and gloves.

I can attest that flash's bushings indeed work well! ;)
It kinda sounds like you'd get poly bushings as a band-aid for not fixing an oil leak.

uhh...hows that? I was planning on getting polys from the get go as I do with all my cars. The fact that the bushing fell off from being rotted by oil and dirt just put it closer to the top of my to do list. As I said earlier, I will be tracing and hopefully fixing the leak this weekend. The whole point of this thread was just to find out where I could get poly bushings for tiny sway bar. Apparently it's gone way beyond that, for whatever reason.