Does control arm bushing composition affect ride quality or NVH?
- Thread starter bobthetj03
- Start date
I think I’m feeling more bumps in the road. Of course, I have the most accurate device, the buttometer, measuring the seismic activity.
Exactly. Need a standard. My butt dyno runs on pure subjectivity!
I’m sure in a week I’ll be adjusted
‘‘Twas a joke. Getting used to the ride.
I drive lots of different vehicles weekly, 350-450 miles 2-4 times a week. Commercial class A and some class C trucks too
Each is a different feel for the first 1-2 hundred miles
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Only changed rear CA’s from stock to MC. I was curious about my tire pressure. It was 23psi. I upped it last night to 26. (33’s)
Again, this was the buttometer, so don’t take it too serious
OP
It's hard to improve on the factory design. Cushy Clevites and twisty arms just work. You'll notice the biggest difference when you do the fronts.
Yep, up until the built the jk, which use a totally different tubular control arms
Well considering nothing new has come down the pike, I am not sure much is going to change. I know that David at Jeep West has zero love the for Synergy DDB at this point, but I have not had the same experience. Maybe I am not asking as much out of them as he is who knows. Currently I am running Clevites, RE superflex, JJs and DDBs on my ride and you would be hard pressed to tell me where the superflex joints are unless I told you.
Unless there is something else going on that I am unaware of and If I remember correctly from an old thread several months ago, I think the problem was that some of the DDB bushings were showing premature wear. If you look at the DDB bushings you will see that some of the bushings have a reinforcement ring around the bolt sleeve and some do not. Those that do not have the reinfocement ring are allowing the busing to dissform and loosen up. I believe that Synergy fixed the design but there are a lot of those early designs out there. My understanding is that Dave installed a ton of them and now has to warranty all of his work due to Synergy's product failure.
I noticed this as well with one of my joints. The shop that did the work for me pressed one of the Synergy DDB bushings into my control arm instead of into the axle mount. So I have a control arm sitting on the self with a brand new DDB bushing in it. I happened to pick it up one day and noticed the bolt sleeve just slid right out. Although it could be push out even when it was new, It was fairly tight and took some effort to slide it out. Now it just drops out. So it seems that just through aging, the material seems to have shrunk and now the sleeve fits loose. Currie got it right when they put tension on the JJ with the snap rings insert. I have not pulled out any of the other arms to see if the bushings with the reinforcement ring suffer the same symptoms or not. I am assuming that the reinforcement ring maintains enough tension on the bushing that the problem is solved. But it doesn't help someone like Dave who has to warranty early work he did.
NOTE: All my Rancho D2 arms have the reinforcement ring for anyone looking at those arms.
The claytons were loose on the ones I bought, the synergy were molded in 2019. I wonder if synergy is backing any warranty with Dave.
If you look age post #451 earlier in this thread, you will see a picture of the reinforcment ring on the Rancho bushing but not the Synergy. I did not notice this difference at the time. Also reading my comments in that post, it appears the Synergy was looser right from the start. I did not remember that.
https://wranglertjforum.com/threads...-affect-ride-quality-or-nvh.13928/post-390864
https://wranglertjforum.com/threads...-affect-ride-quality-or-nvh.13928/post-390864
I asked him about this in psrivats build thread after seeing him using JL bushings.
https://wranglertjforum.com/threads/psrivats-2005-tjr-mild-build.14128/post-630535
OP