Tweet
So I made a part to go with 'advanced' coilover setup on the rear and am looking to sell them if there is enough interest. Its a bushing to go between the rear spring and body so that all the weight isnt on that little piece of rubber or the upsideown spring perch some people use. It spreads out the load from the spring over a wide area so that soft bushing materiel can be used to provide a much smoother ride by damping the sharp jolts between the spring and body better as well as dampen any spring frequencys better. It also separates the strut and spring from having to move together and from the same bushing having to dampen both if you set yours up like mine was. It makes for a much quieter, smoother ride from the back depending on what you had in there before.
So while I was building my festiva to be a car for towing I got coilovers for the rear but did not like how the top of the spring met the body of the car for towing purposes. What I had was a bit different than what I see most others do but flipping that spring perch upsideown doesn't seem like a great solution to me either. I decided to make something better for my application. Pictures are at the bottom of this post. Back in April I came up with a plan, made a casting of the pocket that the strut goes up into in the rear of the car and my employer and I measured and drew it out on the computer. Then we 3-D printed the drawing and I poured a mould of that 3-D printed part.
My first version was a very hard shore A urethane but I decided that they were too stiff where they met the car and not hard enough where the spring met the bushing to be ideal. Julian Pascoal (festyfreak39) tested and confirmed that.
I did quite a bit of research into the materials that were available to me and picked a softer shore A urethane for the top and a hard shore D urethane for the bottom where the spring meets it.
I poured a set which turned out to be what I thought was perfect for a towing festiva like mine and installed them in my car in may of 2017 and by october i had 12,000 miles on them and they worked well and still look good.
I believed that set to be a little stiff for a daily driver or racing festiva so I ordered some different material from California and made a pair with that for Dragonhealer (Ryal Greenwood) to test. He liked them and asked for softer ones yet to test so i made some more and shipped them to him. I sent Ryal 5 pairs of bushings and he tested 4 different hardnesses of the softer top urethane (40,50,60 and 70 shore A) and determined the 40 shore A materiel to be best for the track, for daily driving conditions and also good for heavy weight or towing. I had originally thought they needed to be stiffer than 40a, but apparently if it has squish in place, it has better spring frequency damping. There is a large surface area of the rubber against the car body and the the back end of our cars is light so the psi is pretty low.
I made mine out of 70A which is pretty stiff thinking thats what i needed for a towing car since i will always have lots of weight in the back. I never drove on the rear coilovers without these bushings but with an empty car daily driving 150 ib/in rear springs it was very smooth, nice and comefortable in the rear. Absolutely nothing like any other car ive been in with stiff springs. I did a fair bit of towing and had some heavy loads in the back this summer and it felt great with that as well. But i daily commuted with this car 65 miles a day and did not find the 150 pound rear springs harsh or annoying. Ben Rogers also drove my festiva at the Westiva meet and commented on how smooth and quiet it was.
This is what Ryal said when he got the first set of stiffer bushings:
They are nicer than they looked in the photos! And holy crap, the railroad tracks seem like they don't exist for the rear suspension! All the rattles are gone in the rear even on those two sections of goat trail on the way to my house.
Now that I've hammered around on these for 90 miles, I'd like to try the softer 40A.
The car is still boringly stable at 160kph, dead smooth in the rear.
So i sent him the softer ones and he said this about them:
The soft pair has been in Ethel over 10K miles, last 6K mile was with 500 pounds in back of the car.
Had to put the 150lb/in springs in the rear to tow a heavy trailer-around 1000pounds. It was suprizingly smooth, even over the railroad tracks empty. The soft ones take the harshness out, even with the 150 lb/inch springs!
Hard and soft each have more than 10K miles and look perfect. For my needs, I'll go for the soft 40A.
So since the soft bushings work well for heavy loads in the back for extended lengths of time as well as an empty car i plan to sell these with the soft 40a durometer urethane on top. If you want 50, 60 or 70 instead for some reason let me know and I will make them.
So, now I want to offer these for sale if any of you think they would be useful.
So you can see in the photos below that I made the test ones black and clear. They can be made any basic colour combination you want. The lower part is naturally clear so it can easily be tinted any of the colours. The top is naturally a translucent amber so white and yellow dont look that great but most other colours do. I have ultra black, red, blue, green, white, orange, medium yellow, gray and red oxide. The colours are pretty good, this printout and photo is kinda bad, but thats what I got.
Just a warning that these wont be coming out super fast if people want them. The first mould I made was just cheap, quick and dirty and only intended for me to get 2 parts for myself out of. It ended up making 14 test bushings but it is done now, I have to make another mould before I can sell these. If there isnt much interest i will make the quick mould again. If there is lots of i will make a mould that should last for 100 or more parts.
These also are quite time consuming to make. I have to spend an hour and a half at work after my regular day is done to make one bushing and 3 days is the fastest one pair can get made with one mould because they have to be heat cured and stuff after. And thats only if the machines needed are available at my shop, they are in use reasonably often. I'm a bit busy at home and cant spend that much time after work every day.
So for price I had a paper with what I needed to make to cover my costs back in april and I cant find It right now. I'll try to find it this weekend and edit this post once I do. Its an amount in CAD that I need and at the exchange rate back in June it worked out to about $15 each or $30USD for a pair. That should be around what I can do them for depending on which style of mould I make and what the exchange rate is if I do them at my own pace. So if the dollar makes a big swing that usd price will change but its been pretty stable for a while I think. Im making this post now before I find that price paper because there was some interest expressed on facebook today and I don't want that to die away
Then the shipping will be on top of that and I cant tell you what that will be as I dont know how many I will be shipping at once, but it cost $21 to ship 7 bushings to Ryal in Arizona which ends up being $6/pair to give you a rough idea.
Shipping from Canada to the USA is a little pricey. I think if a bunch of you want these that the best bet will be to ship them in one box to someone who is going to a car meet that everyone else is going to.
If you have any questions or comments please reply to this thread, I may not have explained this all very well.
If you want a pair or 2 just say so and ill start a list below. Include the colours you want and specify if you want a stiffer one. If nothing is specified you'll get a black/clear 40 shore A pair.
These will each have a number stamped on them. I keep track of what day they were made, colour, materials used, who it went to and so on. That way if you forget if yours is a soft or stiff one or sell/buy them you can message me for any info about them. I believe i did enough testing, they are still in perfect condition. According to Charlie if they survived Ryals driveway for this long they should hold up to anything They went for about 5 months or more of testing: daily driving and towing in Canada; towing, racing on a track and daily driving in the heat of arizona. Over 30k miles of testing and they look perfect.
I liked what nate said about his camber plates and im going to copy his disclaimer:
"DISCLAIMER: Improper installation can cause you to die in a fiery crash. Don't be a moron, I accept no responsibility for your actions. No warranty expressed or implied, bla bla bla."
Any bushings i sell will come with installation instructions. If anyone ever has a problem with them even years down the road send me a pm. If its an installation problem ill sort that out and make instructions more clear to everyone, if something happens from something outside normal use i will warn everyone and see if i can change anything with how i build them. I dont know if the life expectancy of these is 5, 10, 20 or 30years. If im still around when they start wearing out i will let people know what the life expectancy is.
So while I was building my festiva to be a car for towing I got coilovers for the rear but did not like how the top of the spring met the body of the car for towing purposes. What I had was a bit different than what I see most others do but flipping that spring perch upsideown doesn't seem like a great solution to me either. I decided to make something better for my application. Pictures are at the bottom of this post. Back in April I came up with a plan, made a casting of the pocket that the strut goes up into in the rear of the car and my employer and I measured and drew it out on the computer. Then we 3-D printed the drawing and I poured a mould of that 3-D printed part.
My first version was a very hard shore A urethane but I decided that they were too stiff where they met the car and not hard enough where the spring met the bushing to be ideal. Julian Pascoal (festyfreak39) tested and confirmed that.
I did quite a bit of research into the materials that were available to me and picked a softer shore A urethane for the top and a hard shore D urethane for the bottom where the spring meets it.
I poured a set which turned out to be what I thought was perfect for a towing festiva like mine and installed them in my car in may of 2017 and by october i had 12,000 miles on them and they worked well and still look good.
I believed that set to be a little stiff for a daily driver or racing festiva so I ordered some different material from California and made a pair with that for Dragonhealer (Ryal Greenwood) to test. He liked them and asked for softer ones yet to test so i made some more and shipped them to him. I sent Ryal 5 pairs of bushings and he tested 4 different hardnesses of the softer top urethane (40,50,60 and 70 shore A) and determined the 40 shore A materiel to be best for the track, for daily driving conditions and also good for heavy weight or towing. I had originally thought they needed to be stiffer than 40a, but apparently if it has squish in place, it has better spring frequency damping. There is a large surface area of the rubber against the car body and the the back end of our cars is light so the psi is pretty low.
I made mine out of 70A which is pretty stiff thinking thats what i needed for a towing car since i will always have lots of weight in the back. I never drove on the rear coilovers without these bushings but with an empty car daily driving 150 ib/in rear springs it was very smooth, nice and comefortable in the rear. Absolutely nothing like any other car ive been in with stiff springs. I did a fair bit of towing and had some heavy loads in the back this summer and it felt great with that as well. But i daily commuted with this car 65 miles a day and did not find the 150 pound rear springs harsh or annoying. Ben Rogers also drove my festiva at the Westiva meet and commented on how smooth and quiet it was.
This is what Ryal said when he got the first set of stiffer bushings:
They are nicer than they looked in the photos! And holy crap, the railroad tracks seem like they don't exist for the rear suspension! All the rattles are gone in the rear even on those two sections of goat trail on the way to my house.
Now that I've hammered around on these for 90 miles, I'd like to try the softer 40A.
The car is still boringly stable at 160kph, dead smooth in the rear.
So i sent him the softer ones and he said this about them:
The soft pair has been in Ethel over 10K miles, last 6K mile was with 500 pounds in back of the car.
Had to put the 150lb/in springs in the rear to tow a heavy trailer-around 1000pounds. It was suprizingly smooth, even over the railroad tracks empty. The soft ones take the harshness out, even with the 150 lb/inch springs!
Hard and soft each have more than 10K miles and look perfect. For my needs, I'll go for the soft 40A.
So since the soft bushings work well for heavy loads in the back for extended lengths of time as well as an empty car i plan to sell these with the soft 40a durometer urethane on top. If you want 50, 60 or 70 instead for some reason let me know and I will make them.
So, now I want to offer these for sale if any of you think they would be useful.
So you can see in the photos below that I made the test ones black and clear. They can be made any basic colour combination you want. The lower part is naturally clear so it can easily be tinted any of the colours. The top is naturally a translucent amber so white and yellow dont look that great but most other colours do. I have ultra black, red, blue, green, white, orange, medium yellow, gray and red oxide. The colours are pretty good, this printout and photo is kinda bad, but thats what I got.
Just a warning that these wont be coming out super fast if people want them. The first mould I made was just cheap, quick and dirty and only intended for me to get 2 parts for myself out of. It ended up making 14 test bushings but it is done now, I have to make another mould before I can sell these. If there isnt much interest i will make the quick mould again. If there is lots of i will make a mould that should last for 100 or more parts.
These also are quite time consuming to make. I have to spend an hour and a half at work after my regular day is done to make one bushing and 3 days is the fastest one pair can get made with one mould because they have to be heat cured and stuff after. And thats only if the machines needed are available at my shop, they are in use reasonably often. I'm a bit busy at home and cant spend that much time after work every day.
So for price I had a paper with what I needed to make to cover my costs back in april and I cant find It right now. I'll try to find it this weekend and edit this post once I do. Its an amount in CAD that I need and at the exchange rate back in June it worked out to about $15 each or $30USD for a pair. That should be around what I can do them for depending on which style of mould I make and what the exchange rate is if I do them at my own pace. So if the dollar makes a big swing that usd price will change but its been pretty stable for a while I think. Im making this post now before I find that price paper because there was some interest expressed on facebook today and I don't want that to die away
Then the shipping will be on top of that and I cant tell you what that will be as I dont know how many I will be shipping at once, but it cost $21 to ship 7 bushings to Ryal in Arizona which ends up being $6/pair to give you a rough idea.
Shipping from Canada to the USA is a little pricey. I think if a bunch of you want these that the best bet will be to ship them in one box to someone who is going to a car meet that everyone else is going to.
If you have any questions or comments please reply to this thread, I may not have explained this all very well.
If you want a pair or 2 just say so and ill start a list below. Include the colours you want and specify if you want a stiffer one. If nothing is specified you'll get a black/clear 40 shore A pair.
These will each have a number stamped on them. I keep track of what day they were made, colour, materials used, who it went to and so on. That way if you forget if yours is a soft or stiff one or sell/buy them you can message me for any info about them. I believe i did enough testing, they are still in perfect condition. According to Charlie if they survived Ryals driveway for this long they should hold up to anything
They went for about 5 months or more of testing: daily driving and towing in Canada; towing, racing on a track and daily driving in the heat of arizona. Over 30k miles of testing and they look perfect. I liked what nate said about his camber plates and im going to copy his disclaimer:
"DISCLAIMER: Improper installation can cause you to die in a fiery crash. Don't be a moron, I accept no responsibility for your actions. No warranty expressed or implied, bla bla bla."
Any bushings i sell will come with installation instructions. If anyone ever has a problem with them even years down the road send me a pm. If its an installation problem ill sort that out and make instructions more clear to everyone, if something happens from something outside normal use i will warn everyone and see if i can change anything with how i build them. I dont know if the life expectancy of these is 5, 10, 20 or 30years. If im still around when they start wearing out i will let people know what the life expectancy is.
Comment