Bushing Refresh on Gen 4 GT Wagon

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Re: Bushing Refresh on Gen 4 GT Wagon

Postby bigBADbenny » Sat Mar 24, 2018 10:35 pm

It depends on the tyre circumference, iirc.
My specs are around 9% under true speed vs 4 or so true stock.
If it’s an issue the inner guard can be clearanced with a mallet, possibly...
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Re: Bushing Refresh on Gen 4 GT Wagon

Postby Shaheenis » Mon Mar 26, 2018 1:25 pm

Looking forward to some of this however with 235 tyres I am expecting the steering to feel quite heavy (which I prefer over light/loose but we will see!):

Positive Caster

Positive caster is when the steering axis is “in front of” the verticle. In a road car, this would mean that the top of the coilover would be pushed towards the rear of the car. Positive caster creates a lot of align torque (the force that straightens the steering wheel when you go forward) which improves straight line stability of the car. Due to the geometry of positive caster it also will increase negative camber gain (a good thing) when turning. As you increase positive caster the steering will get heavier also, but with modern power steering systems this is rarely a problem. Generally you want as much positive caster as you can reasonably get so long as the car is equipped with power steering.

REF: https://www.quora.com/How-caster-angle- ... e-dynamics
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Re: Bushing Refresh on Gen 4 GT Wagon

Postby bigBADbenny » Mon Mar 26, 2018 1:43 pm

Yep and your extra offset will also help with steering feel due to extra track and or kingpin axis.

In our case the added caster lca bush pushes the wheel forward.

If you have camber plates, they can be swapped lhs to rhs & vice versa, and rotated to gain more caster by placing the mount in and rearward...

Add a 365mm d or o steering wheel for more weight.

My08+ jdm STi rack or any my15+ rack (13:1 ratios) for even moar weight!!!
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Re: Bushing Refresh on Gen 4 GT Wagon

Postby Shaheenis » Mon Mar 26, 2018 7:25 pm

Apparently extra camber is recommended when you add positive caster. I am not sure what the stock camber bolts are good for but what is the next easiest camber upgrade? Strut tops?

Also, in my old G1 wagon I had a Whiteline anti-lift kit (LCA). Will this Superpro achieve the same thing or is ALK different from Caster?
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Re: Bushing Refresh on Gen 4 GT Wagon

Postby bigBADbenny » Wed Mar 28, 2018 4:06 am

Alk on Gen4 is the lca bush with the shim on top of the LCA bushing, or under, I forget which.
The WL camber/caster tops would do the trick, or adjustable types as sold by Car Station Marche in J...
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Re: Bushing Refresh on Gen 4 GT Wagon

Postby Shaheenis » Wed Mar 28, 2018 8:33 pm

So the car was in the shop today and I asked them to check out any other bushes that need replacing. Turns out the rear trailing arms and toe arms where both badly worn and recommended replacing. I decided to go ahead (additional 6 bushes I think plus labour) which doubled the already expensive exercise for the front control arms but I don't like having old worn out bits on the car, especially when they are brought to my attention! I don't have the car back until tomorrow as they ran out of time to finish up the wheel alignment due to an issue pushing out one of the toe arm bushes which was seized to the arm. Picking it up and then straight onto Coffs Harbour for Easter which is unfortunately mostly straight roads :P.
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Re: Bushing Refresh on Gen 4 GT Wagon

Postby JB25 » Fri Mar 30, 2018 10:25 pm

Well so far for me I have got nearly everything apart except the inner rear trailing arm bushes, but that's no biggie.

I was originally going to use the press at work to do the job, but since that had so much s#!% surrounding it, I couldn't access it. I ended up biting the bullet & buying one last weekend, it was so worth it :D .

I am also going to paint all the links that I have removed.

The jobs biggest headache thus far was accessing the rear trailing links as it turns out rear trailing arm on these cars is actually part of the knuckle assembly casting!
So that meant pulling everything of the knuckle, including the hand brake assembly all arms & the CV shafts. Adding to that the Trailing arm bolts were really tight & there's not a lot of room to get a breaker in there, especially on jack stands & the drive shafts both needed to be hammered out, something you do have to be a bit careful doing.
Only the hub assembly remained & I ended up pulling that off just to make the knuckle lighter & easier to handle.
Also I couldn't use the press to get to the outer toe links, which are also part of the knuckle assembly, I had to resort to the threaded rod pressing trick, which once I had the right size bits on each end wasn't too bad since they're quite small.

So tomorrow I will be doing a lot of cleaning & painting & if time permits, starting to reassemble everything.

I didn't get offset caster bushes in the kit unfortunately, but hopefully some new firmer bushes will still help a lot with the feel since some of the old rubber jobs looked pretty tired.
Last edited by JB25 on Tue Apr 17, 2018 12:20 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Bushing Refresh on Gen 4 GT Wagon

Postby jarrenowen » Mon Apr 02, 2018 7:14 pm

Shaheenis wrote:So the car was in the shop today and I asked them to check out any other bushes that need replacing. Turns out the rear trailing arms and toe arms where both badly worn and recommended replacing. I decided to go ahead (additional 6 bushes I think plus labour) which doubled the already expensive exercise for the front control arms but I don't like having old worn out bits on the car, especially when they are brought to my attention! I don't have the car back until tomorrow as they ran out of time to finish up the wheel alignment due to an issue pushing out one of the toe arm bushes which was seized to the arm. Picking it up and then straight onto Coffs Harbour for Easter which is unfortunately mostly straight roads :P.


would love to know what they replaced and cost if you don't mind.
i'm looking at dropping the complete rear subframe and doing all the bushes, as well as the front and steering rack. :)
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Re: Bushing Refresh on Gen 4 GT Wagon

Postby Shaheenis » Mon Apr 02, 2018 9:05 pm

Jarren I think you have already seen my facebook post with the wheel alignment specs.

It was expensive because Fulcrum charge $120p/hr labour but in the end I just decided to go for it and I am glad I did. They had the car all day and overnight due to some issues pressing out one of the bushes in the toe arm which had siezed on.

The replaced:

- Front - Lower control arm rear bushes with double offset caster (SPF5112K)
- Front - Lower control arm inner bushes (SPF3091K)
- Rear - Trailing Arms (2 bushes per side not sure on part numbers)
- Rear - Toe Arms (1 bush per side not sure on part numbers)

~$1300 roughly 50/50 on parts and labour inc full wheel alignment

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... pe=3&ifg=1
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Re: Bushing Refresh on Gen 4 GT Wagon

Postby jarrenowen » Tue Apr 03, 2018 10:13 am

Shaheenis wrote:Jarren I think you have already seen my facebook post with the wheel alignment specs.

It was expensive because Fulcrum charge $120p/hr labour but in the end I just decided to go for it and I am glad I did. They had the car all day and overnight due to some issues pressing out one of the bushes in the toe arm which had siezed on.

The replaced:

- Front - Lower control arm rear bushes with double offset caster (SPF5112K)
- Front - Lower control arm inner bushes (SPF3091K)
- Rear - Trailing Arms (2 bushes per side not sure on part numbers)
- Rear - Toe Arms (1 bush per side not sure on part numbers)

~$1300 roughly 50/50 on parts and labour inc full wheel alignment

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... pe=3&ifg=1


ah okay you only got the 0.5 degree caster bushes.
superpro used to make 2 degree ones (which i have sitting around waiting to be installed), which give a bit more.
hope your happy with the results. will be doing a similar thing in the near future.
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Re: Bushing Refresh on Gen 4 GT Wagon

Postby bigBADbenny » Tue Apr 03, 2018 1:21 pm

Doesn’t look like much adjust on the alignment sheet...
But sure does in the FB pic... wheel forward in the arch... :)
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Re: Bushing Refresh on Gen 4 GT Wagon

Postby Shaheenis » Thu Apr 05, 2018 7:59 am

bigBADbenny wrote:Doesn’t look like much adjust on the alignment sheet...
But sure does in the FB pic... wheel forward in the arch... :)


Ben that's because the 'before' was after the upgrade. The before and after is just their tweaks after a road test.
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Re: Bushing Refresh on Gen 4 GT Wagon

Postby bigBADbenny » Thu Apr 05, 2018 10:50 am

Lol that had me!
Next to time I have my Shockworks out eg for service/valve code update, I’d be tempted to swap & rotate the camber plates to get over 7 degrees.
Or swap to DMS street camber plates for full options, TuSpeed have them in stock at around $300-400 iirc...
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Re: Bushing Refresh on Gen 4 GT Wagon

Postby JB25 » Thu Apr 12, 2018 2:00 am

Well it's been taking a bit longer than expected due to family circumstances (ie expansion, the whole reason I bought this car!) but I am nearly there finally.
All arms are back in & I just have to reinstall the hand brake & disc brake assemblies before dropping the car & tensioning all the bolts.

Have to say this isn't a quick easy job & my previous comment about the inner trailing arm bushes being no biggie, well half my luck these buggers didn't make it easy for me.
That was nothing in comparison to the installing of the new rear upper arm bushes however, as these bushes are the cotton-reel style that superpro likes to make.
To start off with I went for one of the outer bushes as they have a taper on one end, which made them easier to press in. The first one went in using the press with minimal fuss, however from there I had a lot of trouble...

Despite my best efforts trying both dish washing detergent and the superpro grease to try and insert the second tapered bush, the bugger just would not go in. Not with a vice or with the press. I also tried pushing the bush through on the flat side however this proved just as hard.
I then moved on to trying the inner bushes, which are symmetrical & quite flat too. Unfortunately I had just as many issues with these & they would either just turn sideways while trying to press them or just compress. I looked at a couple of videos before doing this & clearly the arms that both superpro & other youtube users had put up were nowhere near as difficult as these suckers.
After several hours of frustration and a bit of a cool off I then made a discovery. It turns out because the upper arms on the rear of the 4GEN Liberties are symmetrical, they're all cast the same & it turns out there is only a bevel on one side of the arms where the stock bushes are pressed in. This is why the second tapered bush would not press in, simply it was gripping on the square edge of the opening and refusing to go any further. I ended up putting a bevel on the opposite side of the arms & this solved this issue. However for the inner bushes this made no difference.
My solution in the end was to use the threaded rods that came with my bush removal/install kit with a cup on the opposite end & just the nut assembly on the near end. This allowed the bush to kick a bit, but because there was a rod going through the middle of it, the couldn't just turn sideways anymore.
The final trick once I had these pressed into the arm so far, was to squeeze the remaining front edge of the bush in, with a pair of multi-grips. Once the entire leading edge was in it was a piece of cake to finish off.
So if anyone plans on doing this themselves make sure you have some threaded rod handy or one of the ebay type bush removal kits. It will make your life a whole lot easier.
Last edited by JB25 on Tue Apr 17, 2018 12:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Bushing Refresh on Gen 4 GT Wagon

Postby Shaheenis » Thu Apr 12, 2018 4:31 pm

Jared those rear bushes sound like a biatch. I am not sure I mentioned it but when Fulcrum did mine one of the rear bushes (they called it 'Toe Arm') had siezed to the arm and they couldn't press it out with the 10 tonne press. In the end they squished the bush holder out of round and had to cut the old bush out and repair the arm so it would receive and hold the bush properly. The labour was bloody dear but I am glad I didn't attempt it myself without another daily.
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