Aftermarket Wishbones

[Rob_the_Sparky 9]

I know I've not been around for a while so someone tell me if you already know this but:

 

A little while ago I bought a pair of wishbones from GSF, well aware of the comments on here about the bushes being poor, typically dead after 10k miles. The comments were correct so I set about replacing them as I have a set of Pug bushes in the garage (why I took the risk on the GSF parts).

 

Turns out the bushes were different in the two wishbones! On one side (and on the pug parts) the larger bush has three mteal tubes: one inner, one outer and one sandwiched inthe middle of the rubber. However, on the other side the third, centre, tube was missing. Presumably this is a cheaper way of making the bush but it is little wonder the car handled oddly once the rubber relaxed!

 

My guess is that these cheap copies of the larger bush may well be the reason that the cheaper wishbone bushes are so rubbish. There may also be something in the compound of the rubber but completely missing one of the metal tubes has got to be bad for the stiffness of the bush...

 

Rob

[Rob Thomson 6]

I recently bought a set from PartsBuyParts or whatever they're called. I took the precaution of replacing the bushes, and got my local garage to swap them over. The chap at the garage was obviously curious as to why I'd asked him to do it, as when I turned up to collect the wishbones he showed me one of the 'old' bushes that he'd cut open. This did include three metal tubes, but the middle tube wasn't concentric with the others and there were loads of voids in the rubber. Nasty cheap tat.