Found a rusted out radius arm bracket the other day that I'm going to have to replace (big fun!). While I'm into that job I figure I'll go ahead and replace the radius arm bushings on both sides. Anyone out there have experience with polyurethane bushings (suggested brands/performance)? Just wondering if they are worth the extra $$$ and whether or not it would hurt anything (namely me) to use the poly radius arm bushings but not replace any of the remaining OEM rubber bushings? The goal here would be to improve the handling, not ruin it!

Thanks all!
JJnKY

 

I have used poly bushing in about everything I ever replace on the suspension and like them they are stiffer, and last much, much longer are no harder to put in than rubber ones, and really aren't that much more. I have used energy suspension, and some other brand that I don't recall right now, and both seemed about the same to me.
BTW on the 80-96 ford F150s there was a certian percentage of them that developed a real bad problem, and that was the radius arms would move, and under hard braking cause the truck to make a sudden turn one direction or another, in my case when it happened I hit the brakes hard at about 60mph, and it turned hard left into oncoming traffic I was lucky in that the guy coming at me was fast reacting, and managed to keep from a headon. after having a hard timing getting this thru the mind of the service manager at Ford (truck was only a year old, and had less than 12k miles so still under warrenty, had to make him scared to death before he believed me) he finally called ford directly, they knew about the problem but since only a couple hundred people had been killed, and only one in about 10,000 truck developed this that they knew about they didn't fix this problem all along, but when it came up the problem was to be resolved by changing the radius arm bushings to poly, which they could have done at the factory, but it would have added $3/vehicle, and that was to much cost to save a couple hundred peoples lives, or even a couple of thousand by now.

 

I have used energy and Prothane. I would recommend them since they aren't that much more than rubber. You didn't say what year, but the 73-79 C-bushings are kind of a pain to get to. the back radius arm bushings are cake. Put grease on them or they can squeek. I just used regular lithium grease.