Hi all, during spring this year I tried my hand at making my own bushes (lockdown was starting to get to me!). This partly came about as a bit of the thought excercise, and partly as a way of saving a bit of money. The bushes on my car were a bit knackered and while I was working on the rear end i figured I might as well.
I wanted to make the bush a two-piece bush, to make it easier to fit and make. I started by making a mould for the bush.
Starting using CAD, i modelled up a split mould design for a friend to 3D print for me at the stiff cost of a bottle of (homemade) wine. I based the centre piece of the mould around a hinge pin I had lying around which was convieniently 16mm OD, a nice push fit for the 11/32" (16.6mm) aluminium centre. This came out very nicely as you can see below.
The rubber I used was 85 shore Polyurethane rubber, since I wanted to poly bush it. Im sure lower hardness rubber can be used though if you wanted to keep the factory ride (you may have to glue the aluminium centre in through). After mixing and de-gassing as best I can, I poured the rubber in and waited a day for it to set.
Repeat 16 times and I had a complete set of rear axle bushings.
I used the old aluminium centres from the factory bushes. With the bushes moulded I set about fitting them to the car. This was simply done by pressing the new bushes into the control arms. I had made new lower trailing arms for the car since the old ones were rotten, but the bushing hole is still the same size as the original.
And finally, fitted:
Overall these turned out really nicely. The ride is a lot firmer and the bushes have held up nicely so far after around 6 months of driving. The one concern I did have was that bushes are usually injection moulded, ensuring there are no bubbles in the part. I obviously cannot guarantee this with how I made mine, but so far they seem to hold up nicely and I did take every precaution with making sure I did not introduce air during mixing.
Ive been thinking that if there is any interest, I could get a batch made either out of hard poly or the softer rubber. Is this of interest to people?
Thanks,
Ollie Parkes