After many races this season and various setup changes and adjustments i have come to the belief that the rear trailing arm on our Honda cars plays a MAJOR role in the way the car handles.

First of, i have tried many many setups adjusting tire pressure, camber, caster, toe, spring rate, damping, ride height, sway bars, etc so i know from experiance what i am about to say.

My car tends to understeer from the day it was first raced and every adjustment i made reduced understeer but never really moved it into the oversteer zone. Then i got to drive a friends EG and to my surprise his car oversteered and he was trying to get it to be more neutral.

The shocking thing is that our setups are nearly identical!!! The only difference is that i had mugen rear trailing arm bushings and he didnt. So i decided to try stock bushings and swapped out my rear trailing arm for a stock one with new bushings... SHOCK of my life the car now oversteers heavily and i had to put back camber, increaese front damping, decrease rear tire pressure, and reinstall my front sway bar to get it to handle neutral!!!!!!!!!!!

So when i got back to the workshop i took out the trailing arm and compared it with the one that had the mugen bushings pressed in and found out that when we pressed in the mugen bushings they were not pushed in far enough/or pushed in too far i am not quite sure but they were not pressed in according to the service bulliten specs (12mm i think????).

SO to all you suspension experts, how can the rear trailing arm bushing completly change the way a car handles?!?!?!

 

How old was the OEM bushing you tried?

From what I hear, the Mugen RTA and the OEM RTA bushings are the same things these days.

Also, if you are lowered a lot, you are suppose to DEGREE the RTA bushing so it doesn't bind.. . Maybe there is a big difference b/t the two bushings you tried.

If you want more info, check out all the info / hype around the SPC, Hard Race and other Spherical type RTA bushings. You may find more possible answers there b/c I don't have much for you.

If your RTA was placed 5mm inward or outward I don't think it should matter much at all b/c your toe arm, camber arm and LCA should be keeping your aligment settings in check. The RTA bushing is mearly a vibration absorber and a pivot point that physically, should only let your wheel pivot around it in a vertical axis hence the reason why spherical bearings are so popular in racing now.. .

I have Mugen RTA with spherical bearing Toe and camber kit in rear in conjunction with hard rubber bushings in PIC LCA. -2.5 rear camber and roll over tire markings looks perfectly fine at 38PSI hot. I'm about as neutral as you can get.

 

When i put in a Hardrace RTA bushing, it stiffened up the rear. All the other bushings were stock. I wanted to see the effects of what it actually did. It surprised me, that it made the rear feel more firm.

PS. if you want a set of hardrace RTA bushings pm me.

 

yeah, the Mugen and OE bushing are IDENTICAL. Kris Dahl(Rotten), myself, and Guillaume(MFactory workshop) all compared the 2 and all came up with the same conclusion.

Before I replaced mine on my old EH hatch, I had problems with the rear end being stable- would understeer then whip, etc.

And like stated, you MUST degree in the bushing to compensate for being lowered. You want the bushing to be neutral when the car is at static height.

Make sure you allign the car afterwards too

If I could learn how to upload pics from my verizon picture place account, I'd show you guys a video how to replace them in 10 minutes

 

I'd like to see that video

 

Look into the PCi trailing arm bearings from KIWI.. you wont be let down. Eliminates all the degree stuff

 

remove the toe adjuster bolt, e-brake cable support bolts, abs line bolts, and drum brake line bolts, remove the trailing arm bolts- use a post jack near the trailing arm mounting area and secure the trailing arm against the pole jack and down with a strap. Use special tool to pound them out and in! Been doing it this way for years- by far the fastest, easiest, and safest

THis should work....

http://picture.vzw.com/pub/sha...rward