Got curious about urethane bushing deflection vs. the Progress spherical bearing kit I bought. Loaded the assemblies in a shop press to 700 lbs. First pic is urethane at 0 lbs. Note the yellow reference lines. Second pic is at 700 lbs - over 1/8" deflection !!. Pic number three is the spherical setup, at 0 lbs. I didn't bother with a pic 4 - it looks identical to pic 3. This is the rear lower control arm bushings. I'm getting the fronts and the radius rods based on this!!

 

i've never looked at spherical bearing kits before so...
what kind of materials are the spherical bearings made out of?
are they essentially a solid metal bushing that allow for twisting motions?

couple of other things i'm wondering about...
do you have a site that has any info on your car that you're willing to share?
what type of racing do you participate in and what class? (i'm interested why your carbs are limited in size.)


[Modified by freud, 9:46 PM 6/6/2002]

 

Your exerting force on the bushing from a direction different that how the bushing would react in the car (at least as far as I can tell from the pics). When on the car, the load would be on the bolt inside the bushing.

Either way, the soild bushings will always win in a deflection comparison to urethane.

 

The spherical bearings are alloy steel, with a teflon liner. They are essentially a ball joint with a hole all the way thru. It allows full rotation along the centerline of the hole, and about 15 degrees of "twist" with ZERO deflection. It essentially eliminates all bind from the suspension.

Don't have a site, but the car is a full prep SCCA F-Production road-race car. 1989 Civic DX hatchback. Finished tenth at the Runoffs last year (the clutch wouldn't disengage after the first race lap - made it a bit tough). The rules allow the D15 to run dual sidedrafts, but venturii size is limited to 30mm

Since the bushing mounts in a round shell, it doesn't really matter which direction the load is applied from, as long as the load is applied perpendicular to the axis of the bore. I inserted a shaft thru the sleeve, and the ends of the shaft are supported by V-blocks (the shiny things on both sides). Actually, although I don't have pictures, the factory rubber bushings deflect less than the urethane, but they bind in rotation due to the fact the sleeves are bonded to the rubber, as opposed to free floating in the urethane setup.

With the bearings, I now can run less negative camber, and the car is now VERY stable at the limit (important on full slicks).


[Modified by CivicFP, 4:00 PM 6/7/2002]


[Modified by CivicFP, 4:03 PM 6/7/2002]