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Just gonna post the pictures, so you can see the OE -vs the BMR:
I would like to say, however, and I did NOT believe the dealer: All that creaking noise is GONE when I brake.
The dealer told me the rear LCA bushings were making that noise, and I did not believe it because it
sounded like it was coming from the front. Well, noise be gone!
I see that you put a couple of zip ties on there. Is that to indicate an issue if they snap or to help hold it in place? I know on Frieghtliners they will use zip ties on the leaf springs.
An install video for these just shows doing it, so they're not hanging down. The
cables go through the OE ones, and you can't do that with the solid ones, so they
specify and show wire tieing.
Nice to see that J&M didn't give up on their "poly-ball" approach.
As in the PHB thread, did you make sure the metal inner sleeves in the LCA bushings was longer than the bushings? Proper joint torquing should not be doing any compression of the bushing material - when it does and the bushings are poly or similar, you're very likely to develop clunks and squeaks. The squeaking is only an annoyance that greasing is but a temporary fix for; the clunks mean that the LCAs are actually sliding around in the brackets up to the limits of bolt-to-hole clearances (you don't want this kind of repeated hammering between the bolts and the brackets/sleeves).
I put them on, and torqued to 120 ft-lbs. Ran it for 53 miles, no noises.
They were cheap, better than the OE, so I bought and slapped it on. Did not
take notice of the sleeve, and even their product picture doesn't show the sleeve
longer than the bushing. I looked at the OE bar, and I know the bushing was out
past that bushing, but it's OE... When I took the OE bar off, sound like there is
a spring inside the bar, or sand in it. When you tilt it side to side, you can hear
something moving inside it...
Anyhow, J&M, their product carries lifetime bushing warranty, but I doubt, as not the
original owner, they'd honor it.
Plus, I have no idea where the PHB thread is, and if I were to mention that to
someone, I would have at least provided the link to it....
This is something that most people don't know enough about to even think about looking for, and in the usual polyurethane-bushed aftermarket components the poly is longer than the inner sleeve.
What this means is that the bushing no longer rotates about the inner sleeve like it's supposed to, and the joint really isn't properly tightened even when the torque wrench says that the torque requirement has been satisfied. But since there has to be some rotation as the suspension moves, it ends up happening between the flat faces of the poly and the sides of the bracket that the end of the arm sits in.
Eventually as the lube gets washed out, it'll squeak because of this motion (poly is kind of a sticky material especially when under compression), and the whole business will slide as it rotates if you're either on the throttle or the brakes hard enough as the suspension moves.
Can it be lived with, without this sort of mod? Maybe, but this will depend on the individual. Should you have to? No, not when the fix is as simple as it is.
This is just one of the fixes I've come up with for polyurethane suspension bushings over the last 20 or 25 years that make suspensions with these bushings work better/nicer. We should be able to buy them with any or all of these fixes, but there's only a couple of poly bushing designs I know of that even try to do anything. Maybe it's a case of "why bother, if so few people are ever going to notice, or care if they do?".
FWIW, these two threads were only separated by one or two other threads this morning, and this site isn't so busy these days that there's much chance that either of these threads will fall off the first page until they both do.
Norm
Last edited by Norm Peterson; 09-17-2018 at 01:57 PM.
I know the panhard rod, left side, when I put it in, and let it dangle, it was by the
bushing, the bolt wasn't even in yet. I could let go of the bar, and it hung without
falling out of the LH bracket, it was a tight fit. The RH side went right in, just
some bushing friction, but the sleeves, both sides, were level with the bushings.
I also lubed the surface of the bushings before sliding them in, both the LCAs, and
the panhard rod.
The upper LCA, same thing, the sleeves are level with the bushing. Plus, I looked
at the OE setup, and the OE bushing is huge compared to this J&M, and I am not
sure about putting this one in. The OE bushing on the OE arm is like 50% bigger
than this J&M arm bushing.
With 'level' sleeves, you wouldn't have put much of your bolt torque into compressing the poly. That's the good part.
The OE PHB is partly filled with something granular as a NVH reduction technique. Keeps the PHB from finding any annoying resonances by mechanically damping the PHB tubing. Kind of a neat solution, actually.
About that J&M UCA . . . that part works by an entirely different mechanism than the OE part that it replaces. OE bushings accommodate off-axis movements by being intentionally designed to be soft and 'squishy'. When the body rolls (and the axle mostly doesn't), the axle pivot point and the chassis pivot point no longer line up the way they did with the car just sitting still, so whatever is in the ends of the UCA needs to 'squish' a bit to keep things from binding up any more than they do. With a spherical pivot like the J&M, no 'squishing' is required, as the spherical pivot accommodates it all by freely allowing sliding between the ball and the socket halves. With the length of the UCA being as short as it is, the OE bushing needs to be bigger in order to keep the strain of its 'squishing' within reasonable limits so it won't tear or otherwise fail in fatigue. A spherical pivot has no such concerns, as along as it can accommodate the required rotation without running out of angular travel.
The situation at the LCA bushings is similar, but less severe (partly due to the LCA being much longer).
Something to consider - I would expect the poly-ball UCA to pass somewhat more noise back into the cabin even if you leave the OE bushing in the top of the differential housing alone (there's even a spherical alternative for that location, for the truly hardcore guys).
FWIW, Ford lengthened the UCA at some point after 2008. The longer UCA does have some rear suspension geometry advantages, but requires a chassis-side bracket for the later design, and I think there's a little custom fitting involved as well (not all that hard). Kelly at BMR is well aware of this and what's involved, should you ever decide to pass on installing the J&M and go with something else instead.
Norm
Last edited by Norm Peterson; 09-17-2018 at 05:41 PM.
08-24-2018, 04:58 PM
BMR LCAs Installed
