Giving the fd some love over the fall and winter.

I am putting new ohlins on. The car only has 48k miles and I am shocked how clean and fresh Everything looks in the wheel wells. I am wondering though, are there any bushings I really should do? I have the super pro kit. I haven’t got around to replacing any as some seem like a giant pain in the a$$. But I could do a couple if they are prone to failure and should be done. To my eye they all look great though. But whatever. Any thoughts on this ?

also. I am thinking about the sway bar end links. To me they seem like a part that gets a lot of abuse and get tired. Do you guys upgrade yours? If so which ones.

 

OPINION ONLY......Very unlikely that a 48K mile chassis will need any bushing replacement. Primary suspension wear parts are ball joints & pillow ***** and they usually last well over 48k miles.
Also, solid bushings like SuperPro are usually best for track and autoX cars and not for street cars.

 

Piggybacking onto this, would it make sense to replace pillowballs only on a car with about 99k miles, or do they likely need other bushings also? Better yet, is there an easy way to test to see if each bushing needs to be replaced without taking the suspension apart?

 

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Depending on how bad they are, you should be able to move suspension parts by hand. Just got my FD this year and I could pretty easily shift my rear toe arms as the bushing was trashed. The real answer is "it depends" but with LHD cars hitting 30 years and 99k mi, it's likely time.

 

I've read on this forum that the rear pillow ball bushings on these cars often need replacement at 50-60K miles. If you search, there is much information to be found here on this topic.

Sure enough, at around 50,000 miles, when my '94 was about 21 years old, I heard and felt a "clunk" in the rear suspension when going over bumps at low speed. With the car on jack stands, I could feel -- and see -- play in the driver's side upper A arm pillow ball bushing. The right side had some play too, but not as much.

With the rear wheels off the ground, try to "steer" each wheel by grabbing the tire at front and rear and wiggling it. If you can "steer" them, it indicates bushing play.

First I replaced just the driver's side upper. The suspension still clunked on bumps, so I replaced the other 2 on that side and the clunk was gone. However, I also replaced the 3 on the other side since it wasn't all that difficult once I'd done the first 3, and I figured they were about due. I replaced them with Mazda OEM parts. No problems since then.

 

AFAIK the bushings in stock front SB end-links aren’t replaceable. In the front it’s usually visually apparent when they’re time has come, and the whole end link is replaced. I think the rears with the dust seals are usually pretty robust. You should be fine at both ends with that mileage.
And I replaced a couple noisey pillow ***** on my car at < 50k shortly after I bought it. IIRC it was the lower ones on both sides that were dry of grease behind the dust seals and looked like moisture had gotten to them.
I now use a needle fitting on my grease gun to get just beyond the dust seal and hit all of them once a year or so. If your’s aren’t noisy yet that’s some simple maintenance that you can do over the winter.

 

It would be wise if your rear pillow ***** aren't clunking get new dust seals for them. Remove the arms, remove the old seals, clean out the old grease in there and make sure it's clean and dirt-free inside then install new grease and new seals.

Mazda should have put that in the maintenance. The seals fail and sag over time, that lets in dirt which chews up the delrin in the bushing causing the clunk. IMHO with new seals and new grease they will probably last twice or three times as long.

Dale

 

you need to just inspect all the pillow *****, people were complaining about the clunking when the cars were new

 

^ And it’s not likely the hatch latch needs adjusting, it’s probably not a loose spare tire nor the jack and tools making noise. Ask me how I know.

 

The dealer replaced my RR shock in 1996 under warranty after it began to clunk, but the pillow ball bushings were ok then.

 

Mine were clunking at 52k miles.

I actually replaced all the other rubber bushings with Mazdaspeed equivalents around the same time (including differential bushings, shock mounts, and motor mounts - a much cheaper proposition then than now).

Apart from the motor mounts, all the other bushings were in perfect shape.

 

1st of all, congrats on the new Ohlins, matty.
His car has 48K and don't anyone forget, is almost 25 years old. If the bushings look cracked or have lost their elasticity, I'd swap 'em out. If not, no need to hassle with it because it's a real b!tch to get the old ones off. We had to resort to a torch on more than one of them in my car.

One little thing that stuck with me as a lifelong skateboarder is the polyurethane bushings' hardness is measured just like skateboard wheels; the higher the number, the harder the motor mount or bushing.

EDIT: J-Auto is gone??

 

Pillow *****. Done.

I think I’ll leave the rest. Really happy with the way car looks in the wheel wells. Spent alot of time in there this week.

thanks everyone.

I think I am going to do adjustable endlinks. I am surprised not many people do them on these cars. On other platforms they are considered a must. Anyways it seems like a good idea to have no preload on the bars.