I'm thinking about replacing all the bushes on my car with Powerflex polyurethane bushes.
Do these have any significant disadvantages compared to conventional rubber ones?
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Have them alround on the TR7 & they make an amazing difference, not sure about harshness as this is a stiffly sprung sports car but they certainly last well which is more than the rear axle bushes normally do on a V8 if using rubber.
What car is this on?
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They come in different grades. The softest are roughly equivalent to the original rubber but won't perish or degrade due to oil contamination etc. The stiffer ones will sharpen up the handling but at the expense of greater NVH. If you are going to replace bushes anyway it's a no-brainer to fit poly ones IMHO.
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Also they are usually a lot easier to fit. They don't seem to need to be compressed so much as rubber.
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Thanks all.
The vehicle is an ordinary, basic, Ford Ka. It seems to go through bushes at rather an alarming rate, and I gather that the polyurethane ones will last much longer.
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> ...Ford Ka ... seems to go through bushes at rather an alarming rate...
Alarming image too, given that this is Discussion, not Technical! Perhaps we should offer the stock advice to take an IAM driving course. };---)
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I refer my learned friend to the CBCB.
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"I gather that the polyurethane ones will last much longer"
That being so, I wonder why they're not standard? A few pence more, I suppose...
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That being so I wonder why they're not standard? A few pence more I suppose...
Quote from the FAQs on the Powerflex web site
Cost, availability and marketing. Polyurethane, as a raw material is about ten times the cost of rubber plus it is more expensive and slower to process. Car manufacturers buy a lot of components. If Ford decided to use polyurethane bushes in their range of cars they would need to find a supplier capable of making literally millions of bushes a year. There is no company in the world (even EPTG Ltd) who could make those sort of quantities. Cars are all about marketing. As long as the standard rubber bushes work without serious failure for two or three years then the manufacturer is happy. Would fitting of polyurethane bushes make you buy one car in preference to another make? Probably not.
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Fair enough, but I do remember similar arguments being deployed about galvanised bodywork - what I think of as the 'no call for it mate' approach. Of coure, once Audi had started using it and offered a decent rust warranty alongside, people did start calling for it, with the result that most manufacturers have followed suit (with the possilble exception of Ford, who still seem to offer the tin-worm as standard).
IIRC, the process of pre-galvanising steel that could still be formed and welded was invented by Pressed Steel Fisher, who offered it to British Leyland. Unfortunately, the idea of cars that didn't rust was so alien to BL that they turned it down...
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Maybe a green issue also. Rubber is bio-degradable, polyurethane will remain in the environment virtually forever.
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