slug420

ahoy....

I come from another Mazda board...

MSProtege.com/MazdaMP3.com/Protege5.com

as im sure you all know, our mp3s and MSPs come with a racing beat tuned suspension which has a cumbersome rear suspension clunk caused by worn bushings.

While reading the new Enthusiast's Buyer's guide in Sport Compact Car mag featuring the FD, I noticed on a laundry list of quirks the car had was a suspension clunk. Now after a little searching on your forum here I found that it was also caused by worn bushings.

So whats the deal? did you FD owners ever find a real solution for this problem or do you just replace the rubber bushings when they start to clunk? If you just replace how often do you have to do so? Some mp3 owners have to replace their bushings every 2 months or so, and notice a significant deterioration in handling when the bushings are worn (i think i saw in a couple threads here that RX7 owners didnt notice inferior handling with worn bushings)

Racing beat has been notified of the problem that us protege owners are having with our clunking and a set of worn defective rubber bushings is being sent to them as we speak. They seem quite interested in helping us remedy this problem and one apparent solution is to use urethane bushings instead of rubber. The MP3s are only 2 years old (still under warranty) and the MSPs are just now trickling out of dealerships so it is conceivable that MAZDA issue a recall/new part to replace these rubber bushings rather than replacing them every 2 months on 4000+ proteges for the next 3 years....while I know a recall/new part issue wouldnt effect you guys as much since all FDs ran out of their warranties about 5 years ago (guessing..) but we are trying to get to the bottom of it.

So anyways, we appreciate any input/insight/advice you have in this matter. The more mazda owners complaining to the same place about their bushings, the more likely someone is to fix it!

thanks!

maxcooper

Clunking on FDs is caused by metal ball joint ("pillow ball") bushings. There are six identical ones in the rear suspension that wear out after a while. They last a lot longer than 2 months, though. I'd guess 50K miles before they get loose on average, and it probably depends a lot on how dusty or hot the environment is. There are also some ball-joints-suspended-in-rubber bushings for the toe links that wear out. On those, too, it is the metal rather than the rubber that wears out.

A lot of people are interested in upgrades for the rubber FD bushings, though. Perhaps if Racing Beat found a good source or started making their own urethane bushings for the Proteges, this could be another opportunity to bring a product to market. There are 16 rubber bushings (plus 2 more for the diff mounts) that would be suitable for replacement.

-Max

slug420

are all 16 of these bushings the same exact size? wherein 10 interested FD owners can be seen by racing beat as a order for 160 urethane bushings? if you know the size of these bushings and it ends p being the same as protege size then the solution may be that much closer! (the more potential customers the more likely a company will be to make a fix)

thanks