Good info from you both. Thank you!

Damon - which do you prefer for aggressive street driving/fun - Jim's hard bushing or an aftermarket trailing arms?

Howard - are those tire pressure recommendations consistent across tire brands?

Thanks again.

 

I'll probably be checking everything out this weekend and replacing the toe link at that time. The car does feel much better at speed with the lower tire pressure. One added description ..... a tire in the rear feals out of balance at high speed. Could this be the toe link bouncing back and forth? I have new tires on there and they didn't mention the wheels being out of round ... which they normally do.

 

if you have a sloppy toe link your tire will not be rolling in a constant relationship to the car and will vibrate. you can wreck a tire in 500 miles with either an incorrect toe setting or sloppy toe link.

it may take you some time to get used to 30/27 tire pressure as the car will be quite different than 36... hang in there as the car will stick much better and have a softer compliance w the road. win win.

howard coleman

 

I wouldn't expect to be able to tell the difference between them in any situation; they both are essentially solid. Only reason to go to the aftermarket trailing arm is that it will have slightly more tire clearance for wider wheels (or maybe you can't get a hold of a pair of jimlab's...).

 

thanks.

 

I usually drive with lower tire pressure, but I was trying something different because of my problem.

 

so jim's bushings would do as good a job as spherical rod ends?

 

there's no diff between Jim's bushings and spherical rod ends. both are fairly solid versus the mounds of rubber in the stock mazda bushing.

replacing the front bushing on the lower longitudinal link has virtually no downside in that it does not carry the weight of the car so NVH isn't effected.

OTOH, you get a major performance benefit as most of the engine and brake torque channels into the car thru that bushing. you will notice an immediate performance improvement.

i like the Jim/nylon bushing rather than the spherical rod end as the exquisite aluminum link is retained.

i have forgotten what the aftermarket charges for the spherical rod end and tubular link but i just put my nylon front bushings in my car and paid around $50 for the bushings. they were even pressed into my link.

howard coleman

 

Not to mention it will last much longer than a spherical rod end.

...I will have to disagree on the braking loads though. The majority of that is fed into the chassis through the front lower a-arms because as you know the front brakes do far more work than the rears.

 

interesting...

so where can we get that nylon bushing or was it one of Jim's?

i think rotary extreme's are ~$225 for the set.

 

http://home.earthlink.net/~jimlab/

 

What PSI are you running in those cold (prerun) and do you warm them up before running at all?