unclefester

After giving my car to a mechanic mate - 4 evenings of cursing and he changed all the lower arm bushes as well as compliance bushes and toe arms plus an oil and filter service, change just short of £500 which I'm really happy with given the work involved. The car has done 82k miles and ALL the bolts were stuck solid. Bearing in mind these were all freeish 18 months ago it gives you an idea of how fast things can go rotten. Advice would be to remove and grease them all once a year and get a Geo done.

So ordered a full set of lower arm poly bushes from Powerflex. A pair of Mugen compliance bushes from Si @ Hendy and a pair of poly'd up rear tow arms from Mr Pitts. A full set of lower bolts / nuts / washers / cam plates and 4 droplinks etc from CFL Honda. MASSIVE saving on parts prices from CFL as usual - the bolts and droplinks from HUK would have cost me far north of £500 - I paid less than half that including delivery and other charges.



One cleaned up bolt



Hmm not so nice bolt





So then off to Wheels in Motion at their new Milton Keynes branch to see the every friendly Tony(s) and as usual, excellent work. They did find that the rear subframe is ever so slightly out of line as the camber wouldn't quite come into line but said that I'd only notice it at the higher limits of the handling. As it's no secret that track days aren't my thing, it's not something i'm likely to notice. I may source a 'new' rear subframe later in the year but for now it's fine as it is.

The 'before' settings were post bush change and pre Geo - the 12 miles driving between mates garage, my house and WiM were interesting to say the least



They reckoned i'd need time to get used to the new handling .... not the case, it feels perfect. It goes straight on the straights and holds whatever line I pick on cornering. The overall effect on the handling has been worth the money spent. You don't realise how much better it is until you look down post corner and see that your exit speed is considerably higher than it was on previous attempts.

Does it feel harsh? No not at all, it just feels firm and planted.

Should you do it? If your bushes are old and / OR not adjustable then yes, yes you should. Having seen the state of mine ( seized in place) It's quite clear that the arms have been twisting the bush material in the arms rather than the collar / sleeve rotating with the bush around the bolt - not the way it's meant to work! This explains the nervous handling as things load up and then release off load.

Wish I'd bitten the bullet and got this done at day one or bought a car that had it done, either way it would have been worth the initial cost or the wait to find one that had been sorted already. If i was buying again, I wouldn't buy a car that didn't already have this work completed.

eSeM

(You should also have painted the arms with some POR15 whilst you had them off the car.)

unclefester

If i'd had more time I would have - we weren't expecting them to be such an ARSE to remove. I reckon they'll see the life of the car out as they are now. I reckon in total he's spent around 18 hours on it.

The front was so badly corroded he ended up dropping the subframe to get the old castor bushes out.

None of this is something I'd want to attempt on my own ... or on a drive way.

oxhouser

the bush is meant to flex not spin around the bolt, thats why its important to bolt them up with the car sat at ride hight or you screw the rubber up, if it was meant to turn around the bolt one of the parts would be a bearing material, steel to steel will not last long
the difference on the polly bush is the bush rotates around the inner sleeve so you dont flex the bush like on most OEM set ups.

unclefester

Ahhh that makes more sense!! Questionable how much bush flex was left in mine but it's much better now than before and doesn't feel harsh or unsupple at all. Surely it's just better for Geo settings the way the polybush works?

Nick Graves

I think the nervous handling was more likely a result of the rear cross-toe and that 1 degree caster difference at the fount does weird sh it to S2000 handling!

I can oversteer mine on a trailing throttle at the moment...

oxhouser

yes much better as OEM bush needs to be soft enough to twist with wishbone movement its also soft enough to allow small changes to GEO, poly bush is the middle ground between OEM and just using ball joints, for a couple of quid more i would change the ARB bushes as well, that wont alter the GEO setting just remove the compliance and make the bar do its job

unclefester

Front and rear ARB bushes were all changed although only for new OEM ones ... but that'll do for now ... both my mechanic and I are well and truly bushed

s2k_Nut

Does anybody ever replace these bushes with OEM ones, wouldn't that be OK ? These poly bushes seem to work in a completely different way than the way HONDA intended, I just wonder whether these are the right way to go or just a fashion?

unclefester

You can't Paul - unless you replace the whole arm as the OEM bushes are pre-fitted and not available separately. Having never driven a new S2000 with fresh OEM bushes I can't say if it's better. However as it's meant to be a sports car, handling should come first then ride comfort - I don't feel that the ride has suffered at all with the lower arm bushes all done, if anything it feels tighter but not any harsher. Because the car is more controllable and tracks better it allows me to relax more when driving it which in turn makes it less tiring to drive.