Poly or Rubber Bushings

[blkaplan]

Im curious if you know how long heim joints last for? I live in a pretty wet climate.

I have 10 years and over 100k on my bearings and drive the car year-round in a climate that gets snow, salt, rain, and heat.

 

[HiSPL]

Just don't stack poly rear bushings, a 25mm rear bar, and overload springs.

What do you mean stack? Like don’t use them on both sides of torque rods or trailing arms? I already have 25mm front and rear sway bar.

All of these things limit the flex of the rear axle to some degree. Add them all up and pretty soon you are driving a car with wildly unpredictable handling.

The big thing is that springs and dampers resaist the pure up and down motion of the rear axle. So it's stiffer. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, just stiffer than stock.

Now sway bars do something different. If one wheel hits a bump but the other side doesn't the sway bar resists that one wheel moving up and down like it should. The stiffer the sway bar the more it resists.

Poly bushings in the rear ALSO resist torsional movement a lot like the sway bar. This is a quirk of the 240 rear linkages. It doesn't work this way on all cars, but it does on ours. For FULL suspension compliance those bushings need to be able to twist a small amount in the left/right direction, not just rotate around their center axis.


So you take all those things and add them together and you get a stiffer, less torsionally compliant rear suspension that will be much more likely to oversteer you right into the ditch.

Any one of these things isn't that big a deal. You can run poly bushes on a street car with a stock (or none) sway bar with stock ride height and shocks and be largely just fine. As you add up suspension mods, you will want those poly bushings less and less. A moderately low and stiffened car can still have a good ride and great handling charecteristics, but you can't just throw the credit card at it and expect it to be perfect.

Search all the Rally dude threads around here. If you want a 240 that hooks up and spits ou straight down the road those guys have got it dialed. Just a warning, those cars don't LOOK like they would be fast.

 

[AnthonyHardy2]

Poly bushings in the rear will definitely help reduce roll in the rear but IMO a thicker rear sway bar is a much better way to do it if that's what you're looking for. My 244 had full poly bushings, IPD 25mm swaybars and IPD springs on it when I got it and it would easily spin the inside tire in turns with a stock engine and wide tires. Just swapping the axle poly bushings for spherical bearings made such an immediately noticeable difference in rear roll stiffness that on the first test drive I pulled over to make sure I hadn't forgotten to bolt in the swaybar when I reinstalled the axle.

Personally I'm not a fan of increasing rear roll stiffness with anything other than stiffer springs on a 240 since it will usually make it harder to accelerate out of turns due to the inside tire being much more likely to spin. A LSD helps with this but it's always more ideal to have all 4 tires making good contact with the ground.

 

[Brick by Brick]

240 Rear Axle Spherical Bearings V3

volvo 240 spherical axle bearings, volvo 240 trailing arm bushing, volvo 240 rear suspension, Volvo 240 superpro,

www.bneshop.com

240 Hybrid Adjustable Torque Rods V3.5

Pricing: 265 USD + Shipping (Sold in a set of 2) Key Benefits: High Strength Alloy Steel FK Adjustable 3 piece spherical PTFE lubricated rod ends CNC Machined Aluminum center link / Black Anodized High-Quality Stainless reducer bushings allow the use of standard-sized rod ends with increased...

www.bneshop.com

This is probably what I'll be running. I'm generally anti-heim joint (the torque rods) on daily driven cars but this is the best off the shelf adjustable option available and I'm not about to make my own. If it's a quality joint they should last years here in SoCal before driving me crazy. Haven't seen any long term reviews on them unfortunately.

 

[spock345]

This is probably what I'll be running. I'm generally anti-heim joint (the torque rods) on daily driven cars but this is the best off the shelf adjustable option available and I'm not about to make my own. If it's a quality joint they should last years here in SoCal before driving me crazy. Haven't seen any long term reviews on them unfortunately.

A bunch of folks here have run them for years without issues, and in climates far harsher than Southern California.

 

[Jack]

A bunch of folks here have run them for years without issues, and in climates far harsher than Southern California.

How often are the heims replaced ?

 

[dl242gt]

You can also buy dust boots for the heim joints to help keep the road crud out of them.