Steering Rack Bushings

[onespiritbrain]

About a year ago, maybe a little less or little more, I made some rack bushings out of some high grade neoprene rubber I had in the shop at work and yesterday I found them to have failed.

 

Some of y’all probably already know this but for those who don’t know like me, neoprene is not good for bushings. I thought because good quality SO/SJ cable comes jacketed in neoprene that it might be a good choice, but it’s not.

 

Around a year in the presence of oil and pressure (clamp force) neoprene begins to separate.

[mjotrainbrain]

That's good to know, thanks for experimenting!  Will you be getting the poly ones from AC now?

[AlabamaDan]

Wow.  What does that do to driving?  Vibration in the wheel?  Slack in steering?

[onespiritbrain]

I got the Dorman brand ones from the parts store. I think they’re rubber too but they have some sort of coating that’ll hopefully extend the life past one measly year. They literally have no scent to them at all and there’s a weird rainbow looking sheen on their surface. It looks very much like oil on the surface of water.

 

This was kind of an emergency repair since the whole rack was moving around. On a tight curve I was getting 60-90 degrees of steering wheel travel before it would catch and start steering. I actually almost crashed the last time I was going thru the mountains because of it, well that and the passenger side control arm bushing was almost completely gone.

 

I would definitely like to have been able to put urethanes on there.