The sway bar neoprene bushings on my Suspension Technology front and rear sway bars creak like an old man's knee bones. I drilled and tapped and installed grease fittings on the mounting brackets on each, since I knew that they would have a tendency to be noisier than the stock rubber bushings. Even keeping them lubed with chassis grease does not seem to help. Anyone else have this problem? I was going to get the Racing Beat bars until I found a comparison chart for the stiffness of the bars from various vendors. The ST was the stiffest. I found out it is also probably the heaviest, since it is solid, rather than hollow, like most of the other brands. It is also so much over size diameter that the RB mounting plate does not work unless you shim out the bar mounts with fabricated plate/shims. Not sure I made the right choice.

 

Racing Beat sells a tacky grease to lube the bushings. It works ok.

Rob

 

Neoprene bushings? Wouldn't those be much mushier than rubber? Maybe polyurethane. BTW, I don't have anything to add to this discussion that could help you.

jerk_racer@hotmail.com

 

Jerk_Racer- Thanks. I *meant* to say polyurethane.

 

Hopefully mine won't be too bad. I just ordered the Suspension Technique set for my '89 T2 a couple of days ago.

jerk_racer@hotmail.com

 

Jerk_Racer- When I ordered my ST set, they originally sent me the wrong set. It was for the 2nd gen. Out of curiousity, I set it under my 90 GTUs to see what the difference was. It was, as far as I could determine, the same as the factory front and rear bars. I believe the sway bars on your TII are the same as on the GTUs. You may want to check if there is really any difference between the ST set and what you already have on your car. When they finally sent me the correct set for my 3rd gen, there was a big difference. The front bar is about 1/8 inch larger diameter. It is also solid, instead of a hollow tube like on the stock, and it weighs a ton. I dropped the friggin thing on my head while I was installing it and almost knocked myself out.

 

Thanks for the heads up. The GTUs and Turbo bars are the same according to what I've read (Sports Car Color History: Mazda RX-7). The size for the stock bars is 24mm and 14mm front and rear respectively. The size for the ST bars is approximately 27mm and 19mm front and rear respectively. I guess I'll have to measure them before I install them.

jerk_racer@hotmail.com

 

Oh BTW ronarndt, I forgot to commend you on fighting the urge to upgrade your GTUs. I'm sure that it crosses your mind quite a bit. Be strong.

jerk_racer@hotmail.com

 

I am currently considering the purchase the ST front and rear bars. After reading your post it seems that you preferred you purchased a different set. Do you still feel the same way? Did this noise occur when you first installed them or a long time after? The ST set is significantly cheaper than the other anti sway bars on the market i wonder if you get what you pay for? Although i havent heard any similar complaints.

Matt
AIM: celli088

 

Jerk_Racer- You mentioned the book by John Matras. He flagged me down in the parking lot of a store in NE PA a few years ago while he was writing his book. My GTUs is on pages 90-91, 92, 93 and on the back cover. He called me back after he came out to my place to photo the car to let me know that there had only been 100 made in 1990. Apparently that was the minimum production run required to allow the manufacturer to compete in GTU classes in IMSA. BTW hold on to your copy of the book. It is out of print.

 

That's way cool. Talk about six degrees of seperation.

jerk_racer@hotmail.com

 

so uh which of the bushings don't creak like an old man? rubber, polyurethane, delrin? i want no squeaking.

my gf's 93 civic hatchback also had suspension techniques poly urethene sway bars and the did it every bump. it was so damn annoying. i sprayed wd-40 on em lol....i don't know if tahts bad or not but it stopped the creakin

we already sold the car