Recent fun in the underground lair: Front sway bar bushings on the Ford van. This E-150, a 2003, is from the period where the sway bars poked through holes in the twin I-beams. A very direct method. Unfortunately, the factory bushings wear out and there winds up being a lot of daylight in the hole.
Nobody likes a sloppy hole.
I was herding the van down the highway a month ago when it came to me, that “chuggle” kind of subtle noise I had been hearing from the LF corner when riding around town with the window down, why it might be the sway bar bushings I knew weren’t great, and that that also meant that driving down the highway, minor steering corrections were being done without the front sway bar engaging… at first. Slop on each bushing meant a period of delay before the front sway bar helped out – which mean the front roll resistance was lower, but rear roll resistance stayed where it was, meaning less understeer/more oversteer.
Or “loose” in NASCAR terminology.
Not all oversteer is tail-out drifty yee haw stuff. It’s just a term referring to how much rotation you get for a given amount of steering input, and in real life, especially herding a giant Blunderpig down the highway, yes, give me boring understeer, please. OK, technically, I may have moved the van from "less understeer" to "more understeer." And only in a specific situation -- but one that the van spends most of its time in.
I had trouble getting the stock bushings out last weekend. They’re bonded into metal sleeves, and the metal sleeves must come out of the I-beams, too. My first attempts involved a 5/8” bolt and washers and sections of pipe and whatnot, as I was following this guy’s method:
http://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1192319-removing-i-beam-bushings.html
It didn’t do jack squat for me.
The bushing sleeves poke out the back of the I beam and you can look at them and see if you’ve made any progress pushing them forward. I never did. I rented a ball joint kit from the auto parts store, looking for a certain size sleeve to fit around the front of the bushing while I cranked the bolt/nut/washer combo. Didn’t have enough room for the big C clamp that comes in the ball joint kit. It was one of those situations where if you took everything apart further, like, say, shocks off, radius arms off, tie rod off, you’d have more room for other attempts.
So I gave up and reached for implements of destruction. There’s a lip in the metal sleeve so it can’t be pushed any further through the I-beam when they assemble these at the factory. I used an air chisel to lift up the lip on the metal sleeve. I could reach about two thirds of the perimeter with my air chisel, then I switched to a square tip punch for my air hammer and pushed the wreckage though easily through the hole, towards the rear.
How did I ever live before my air compressor? I would have gone batty doing that with a hammer and chisel.
Installation was a breeze by comparison; I even used a large woodworking C clamp on one of them.
I-beam bushings:
Moog K80222 Sway Bar Link Bushing
http://amzn.com/B000QQXAH8
Bar-to-body bushings:
Moog K8690 Bushing Kit
http://amzn.com/B000C560AW
For $12.61 for the I-beam bushings, I'm happy. It didn't solve the "chuggle" noise I was hearing from the LF wheel with the window down. But it steers better now, like a normal understeering street car when making small corrections. And the ride got a little worse at low speeds, because there’s less front suspension independence, left to right. Oh well, that’s minor compared to weaving down the highway like so many E-150’s like to do.
I also replaced the bar-to-body bushings with some blue plasticky things that are the basic Moog part, because 148K mi/12 years/while I'm in there/fair price.
Oh, and one of the four ball joints that some guys replaced (not on my watch) not that long ago has worn out. They put in some brand that have zerk fittings… but not the right lower, where something else went in, presumably cheap shitte.
People! Moog ball joints are $24 on amazon! Why would you buy anything else?! So there are more projects in the future of this front end, and bigger, longer efforts than these bushings. (Although the bushings sure stymied me when I was tired and running out of time and orgone, the previous weekend.)
