My MM LCAs last me 5,000 miles

[bwahl602]

I bought the HD version, non-adjustable LCAs. The ones with the spherical at the axle, Poly at the chassis

Well the rear end of the car suddenly got wild a few days ago. Popping and floating all over the place. Car was scary to drive... Looked under it twice and couldnt find the source. Took it to some back roads today and beat on it a little... the source showed its face

heres where the drivers side LCA was sliding back and forth, you can see the bushing oozing out of it and all the grease too

prolly not supposed to look like this huh?

Crappy thing is, ive got around 5-6 thousand miles on these. Passenger side was ripped too. And not a single race..all street driving.. im not easy on my car..but im still very dissapointed

Bill

 

[astrodudepsu]

daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn dude. "scary to drive" has to be an understatement.

 

[VirtualSVT]

Uh...yikes man. That's some shit.

I never had an issue with my steeda weight jacker lowers on my fox body and they had more than 50k on them with tons of abuse

 

[bwahl602]

it was a little.... loose... to say the least... less in the turns than you would think... but a rolling 20mph 2nd gear launch made you feel like the rear was next to you... car drove sideways because the rear was moving so much

ive got factory uppers on mine. Brand new at the same time as the LCAs. Its what MM recommended i run until i decided to hop up to the PHB setup (which i already ordered)

Ill call MM tomorrow. Hopefully they help me out somehow here. But if all they are gonna do is send me new bushings, i think ill go a different route. Might be a lower control arm build thread starting soon

 

[jordan0806]

I'm sure MM will help out. I"ve got the same one's on my 95 with over 10K miles on them without issues..

 

[spike_africa]

My lakewoods split them also. I just replaced all the bushing in my lowers about 2 months ago. Ass end would move around alot on the bottle when they were ****ed up.

 

[bwahl602]

Heres my email to MM. Ill update you guys with what they have to say.

Maximum Motorsports,

Subject: Bushings on HD LCA’s went after 5,000 miles

Vehicle: 2004 Mach 1 Mustang

Front Suspension:
Steeda Sport Springs
Bilstein HD Struts
MM C/C plates
MM Solid Rack Bushings
MM Bumpsteer Kit
MM Strut tower brace
Steeda X2 Balljoints
MM Solid Steering Shaft
18x9 FR500s, 275 Nitto INVO

Chassis:
MM FLSFCs

Rear Suspension:
Steeda Sport Springs
Bilstein HD shocks
MM HD Lower Control Arms (bought new last year)
Factory Ford Upper Control Arms (bought new last year)
18x10 FR500s, 295 Nitto INVO
4.10’s factory Trac-loc
(in transit to me – MM PHB)

This car is my weekend nice weather car. No racetracks or racing of any kind. I will say I drive, “spirited” on the back roads and thanks to all of the MM suspension pieces the car handles very well.

The car just came out of storage for the winter and I have noticed that the rear end has been a little loose. This past weekend, I laid into the throttle rolling 25mph in second gear. What came next induced quite the pucker factor: The car pushed hard to the left and pretty much drove 15* left rather than straight until I let off. Felt like the rear axel was next to me. Drove the car home, jacked it up and crawled underneath and could not find the source of the problem from visual inspection. My suspicion was a bushing had gone out although I had not yet found which one. I jumped online and used this as an excuse to purchase the MM panhard bar I have been eyeing up for some time. Today, I drove the car again. I quickly turned around and returned home due to unpredictable rear axle behavior and clunking. Got the car back up on jack stands and now I find the driver side lower control arm bushing half out and evidence that the control arm had been sliding forward and backwards about ½ inch.

Pulled the control arms off and disassembled the urethane bushings. The drivers side bushing is split across all three pieces. The passenger side bushing is intact but has the start of a tear.

I was kind of shocked to see this kind of carnage. I don’t road race, drag race or autocross the car. And the control arms were just installed last fall. There is less than 6,000 miles on the car since there install. I know these suspensions are prone to bind, but the spherical bushings at the bottom should have prevented much of that (even though they are pretty poor quality and don’t fare well with the weather). Additionally, the upper control arms I’m using are the factory ones, exactly what MM recommends. I purchased the HD version because I wanted a performance improvement but did not want the NVH that come with the extreme duty LCA’s. Unfortunately, it seems that the HD version are unable to manage the suspension articulation, even for a street car. I did notice that the spherical bushings on the bottom are rather difficult to move (and have been since new). Maybe the poly bushings were getting a serious beating because the sphericals were not doing there job.

Either way, I think you can understand why I am disappointed. Ive got a 5,000 mile set of LCAs that have no upper bushings and the lower spherical bushings don’t move freely without a 12 inch screw driver for leverage through the bolt hole. I’m not sure if the design to use polyurethane is poor, or perhaps I just have bad spherical bearings in this set that are allowing bind. Either way, these control arms smoked a set of bushings fast.

I’m not sure what to ask for from MM. I listed the parts list for the car so that you could see that I am a consistent customer for you. Id like a new set of bushings at no cost, but Im expecting the same result 5,000 miles from now. Maybe these will last longer since I will soon be installing a PHB, but I don’t like the idea of the bind that obviously exists. Let me know what you think

Thank you

Bill Wohl
Landenberg, Pa

 

[white04mach]

Just wondering if you torqued the bolt to factory spec? I remember when I did mine I torqued them to factory spec, which was tighter than I thought was ever needed but I did it anyways. Maybe they were not tight enough causing enough play to make them wear premature.

 

[bwahl602]

torqued to spec with car back on wheels

 

[blk00gtvert]

another big thing is you have to have the suspension loaded before you tighten them down all the way. if you tighted on a two post lift of up on jack stands and then lower down it will shred bushings very fast...

 

[bwahl602]

another big thing is you have to have the suspension loaded before you tighten them down all the way. if you tighted on a two post lift of up on jack stands and then lower down it will shred bushings very fast...

we had it on the drive on alignment lift when we torqued them..

FWIW, you only really need to do that with factory bushings. Rubber bushings are fused to the inner sleeve, only have so much movement ability. Dont have to do that with spherical and aftermarket bushings that move independant of the bolt/sleeve

 

[unforgiven]

That is a very well written letter, I hope they address your concerns.

 

[mineralstangt]

I didn't care for my MM LCA's but I love my Lift Bars, sorry to hear of your misfortune.

 

[RedfireSVT]

that definitely sucks but it happens. no matter how good a part is or what forces it's designed to withstand, things break when you beat on them. hopefully MM will help you out.

 

[bwahl602]

I was not very impressed with the LCAs either. I should have just built them myself like I had planned. I actually have a good bit of experience with suspension fabrication and dynamics. I built most of the suspension on my 91 bronco rock crawler 4 years ago. Ive gotten a lot of hands on experience with different links and spherical rod ends.
heres the solid front axle swap in my 91 bronco. 8 inches of lift, could put one tire up on a 38" high object and keep the other three on the ground. Radius arm front with panhard bar (I didnt make the radius arms)

Anyways, the MM LCAs use a uniball spherical joint thats captured by a snap ring and has two aluminum spacers installed to make the unit the correct width for the mount.
There is a few problems with this:
1. The uniball (essentially the ball part of a heim joint with just a race around it) does not appear to be good quality. Its not self cleaning and doesnt seem to be coated
2. The snap ring rusts, dumping crap into the uniball and locking it up.
3. The aluminum oxidizes, dumping more metallic crap into the uniball.
4. There is no way to grease or lubricate the uniball.

The lower spherical joint on my MM HD LCAs takes a good bit of force to get moving. I suspect that since it is so stiff, the urethane bushing took the majority of the abuse. End links like that should move pretty freely. They should be tight and smooth, but not stiff or really loose. My LCAs had a very stiff lower spherical joint right out of the box, probably because the joint was installed and then the unit was cleaned for painting. The joint then had any lubed washed from it.

The little bit of weather the car has seen with these on has really beat up the spherical joint. I bet the extreme duty ones would be hell on the car as well. Neither joint can be lubricated and would most likely break down and become sloppy. Whats next? Clunk clunk clunk

Im gonna see what MM wants to do. Hopefully they take these things off my hands. Ill sell the replacements to cover the cost of building my own

 

[VirtualSVT]

that's awesome...

 

[bwahl602]

Sent MM an email on Sunday. Had a reply 6 am East coast time on monday morning. Nice

MM -Mr. Wohl,

The damage to your RLCA bushings is probably due to the fore/aft loads being higher than the bushing can sustain. The damage definitely isn't from bind. Damage from bind would show up as the outer thrust surfaces of the outer bushings being cracked.

When you removed the bushings from the RLCAs, do you notate which direction the tear line was orientated in? From this orientation, it is possible to determine if it was the acceleration or braking forces that are at issue.

I assume that your car has a TR-3650 (stock) transmission in it.

You mentioned that the torn bushing was apparent in the handling after the car was removed from winter storage. From this I'm inferring that the handling of the car was fine, before it was placed in storage. I wonder if the very low temperatures damaged the polyurethane bushing. Do you know what the coldest temperature the car was, while in storage?

With a TR-3650 transmission, 4.10:1 gears and a fairly heavy Mustang, your car has the potential to damage the polyurethane bushings if driven violently. From your driving description, it certainly sounds as if this shouldn't be a problem at all. The bushings should have lasted, much, much longer than 5k miles in your application.

Is the other bushing available for inspection? Has it been cleaned up at all? We'd like to see it exactly as it came out of the RLCA.

Did you grease the bushings anytime after installation? If so, which grease did you use?

The spherical bearings in the opposite end of the RLCA are supposed to be tight when they are new. The outer race of the bearing is swedged around the ball. This creates some areas between the two of high contact forces and small area. This is an unavoidable result of the fact that steel springs back when formed. As the bearing is load cycled, the tight areas loosen up some and the bearing friction drops. It should never become loose. If there is actual play between the outer race and the ball, the bearing will make noise, which is really unacceptable.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say that the spherical bearings are pretty poor quality. Are you referring to the friction level or something else?

What is your time frame for getting the car back to being drivable? We could obviously send out replacement bushings immediately, but that may not fix the problem. I want to collect as much data as possible to try and determine what caused the problem, to keep it from happening again. I apologize for the problem with the bushings. They absolutely should not have torn in only 5k miles in your application and usage.

Sincerely,
Jack Hidley
Maximum Motorsports Tech Support

My response:

Mr. Hidley,

Thank you for a very quick response to my problem. Just another example of the superb customer service MM provides for its customers.

I cannot be 100% sure of the orientation. The bushing was actually pushing out of the joint when I inspected it. I believe the tear was towards the rear/bottom of the joint. Again, I cant be 100% sure on this.
This is a photo I took of the LCA chassis mount. You can see where the CA was sliding back and forth. Also, you can see where the bushing has come out.
http://i942.photobucket.com/albums/ad262/dcskater602/Mach Brakes suspension/a2f12bb2.jpg
You can see some of the fresh purple grease coming out. I don’t believe I over greased the bushing. And I don’t think you should be able to since these bushings have the grease channels in them. Please excuse the dirty car.

Yes, the car has the 3650 transmission. The car only has a few bolt on modifications. Id predict around 300 RWHP.

Both bushings are available; unfortunately I wiped them down a good bit when I removed them as I was inspecting them. The bushings were lubricated when installed and were just recently re-lubricated. I have always used standard chassis grease in my grease guns for bushings.

As far as the spherical bearing on the other end, I called them poor quality because I don’t think they are a great choice for that location. At the bottom of the axle, where dirt and road salts are most likely to accumulate, that joint has no protection from the environment. I’m not sure who the manufacturer or the joint is, but is the joint coated and self cleaning? Also, the snap ring and the bearing race seem to be rusting. That allows metallic crap to dump onto the bearing surface, messing up the joint.
Like I said, that joint was very tight when I received it. Now, the thing barely moved. I soaked them with some PB blaster last night and got them moving again, but only with the help of a screw driver big screw driver through the bolt hole.

The car was in storage for a few months. Im in Pa, it doesn’t get very cold here.

Let me add a little more to the story now that Ive thought of it. I had the car out a few times this spring already. The bushing problem just started recently. And come to think of it, it started right after doing some rear suspension work. I replaced the shocks on the rear of the car with Bilstein HDs. Perhaps what happened is the bushing tore when the suspension was drooped fully. Obviously, they should slide in the mount. But the problem definitely occurred after I installed the bilstein shocks and new brakes. No work was done to the LCAs.

Let me know what I can do to help. Im happy to see that you guys are eager to find a cause to this rather than just bandaiding it up. I suspect that the lower spherical joint was adding a lot of stress to the poly because it was not moving so well. Alternatively, the bushings were hung up and tore when I jacked the car up and lowered the suspension to full droop.

Thank you for getting back to me so quickly.

Bill Wohl


Ill keep you guys updated.

 

[92GreenGT]

They'll take care of you and get the problem fixed, top notch guys there.

 

[alexs93lx]

You should probably write longer emails. Hope this helps!

 

[bwahl602]

You should probably write longer emails. Hope this helps!

HAHAHA :cuss: