I have just found the rear trailing arm bushings on my car are beyond shot and need to be replaced. I bought a pair of Moog bushings $39.00 each at Advanced Auto (part #80668) and they were too small and had to be returned. I’m not interested in a urethane set up so need something closer to OEM. I stopped at the local Acura dealership and they printed me out a page with their (part number #52385-sk7-n02) at $76.59 each. I did a search on EBay with the Acura part number and the bushings that show up are made by “Dorman” (part number 905-751).
I am trying to avoid reordering and returning these parts if they are not going to fit…especially if I order something online. Where can I get the correct size bushings for my car other then the dealership?
Yeah i was in the same situation because i didnt want to press in my es bushing. Went to every parts store and still came up short. So i ended up doing the es route.
Likely the bushings you got which were too small where EF bushings (or possibly DC, off the top of my head I forget how the DC’s size up compared to the rest), not DA bushings.
There’s a lot of debate about the poly bushings, personally I’ve avoided them. I would not recommend sphericals for a street car. I have them on my car and it’s much louder and harsher with the sphericals. Of course my car is gutted so that amplifies this effect. With softer springs and full interior it may be manageable - but expect your ride quality to decrease if you go spherical. I would recommend OEM, Mugen, or Hardrace rubber bushings for the trailing arm. And don’t forget too “clock” them if you’re lowered.
It’s more guesswork than anything else. Trial and error would be a PITA since you’d have to remove the bushings and re-install multiple times. What I did when I installed my PCI offset bushings was to put the car on jackstands, remove the wheels, then jack up the rear suspension to put load on it. From there you can see the angle of your RTA (make sure your ride height is where you want it). I put a level up to the arm and put marks on the arm to represent the “horizontal” line with which to line up the bushing.
I didn’t really take very good pics but this may help you get the gist (I did this for a friend, but did basically the same thing when clocking mine). In this first pic you can see that I’m holding the carpenters square so that it’s parallel to the trailing arm.
In this next pic I’ve re-oriented the square so that it’s actually parallel to the plane of the chassis (depending on how you have the car lifted or the surface you’re on, this may not be true level). I placed the square flat on the tab where the bushing and chassis meet. So that put the ruler parallel to where the bushing was originally installed (these bushings were NOT clocked). As you can see there’s significant rotation of the TA compared to this plane. That’s a lot of added rotational stress that the bushing was under. I’m sure these bushings would have been in better shape had I known about clocking when I installed them 10yrs ago.
Here you get a better picture of the “tab” where the bushing and chassis meet. That’s what I pushed the square up against in order to find the proper “horizontal”.
For reference, the angle you see above was with a relatively conservative ride height (these were a friend’s Tein’s on my car temporarily while the rest of my suspension was off the car and getting overhauled). If you’re lower than this, as most people are, the angle will be even more extreme.
all that information is great… but i still dont fully understand how to actually clock the bushing. i see that if it is put in flat, when the height of the car changes, it will rotate to compensate. so basically what i am doing is finding the position of the bushing after it would rotate according to my ride height and installing like that?
i’ve never done an rta bushing before but im guessing the thing in the middle is able to be turned. from the looks of the pictures, the bolt that mounts it to where you put the square can only be installed 1 way, which leaves me confused as to how the bushing is supposed to be adjusted…
All we mean by “clocking” is to rotate. The bushing is NOT adjustable. It is pressure fit into the arm, so once it’s pressed in, it isn’t going to move at all. You need to determine the rotation needed, then press it in in that orientation. The middle part of the bushing cannot be “turned” as you mention without either putting strain on the rubber (the problem we’re trying to solve) or simply rotating the whole bushing. The middle piece is metal that is fused with rubber to the outer metal ring which fits into the arm itself. When “clocking” you rotate the ENTIRE bushing, not part of it. It’s extremely simple, and once you start the job it should be perfectly obvious what needs to be done.
There is an arrow on the bushing which is perpendicular to the tab which bolts to the car, when installed in the correct OEM position the arrow will point straight up. Or in the example above, it will be perpendicular to the ruler in the first pic. Here’s another pic I found really quick with a google search. The ruler is parallel to the tab, which is parallel to the arm, which is perpendicular to the arrow. This is how you’d install the bushing if the car was stock height.
When you “clock” the bushing you rotate it. I determined the angle of rotation by holding the ruler firm against the tab of the bushing while it was mounted on the car with the suspension loaded. Since the tab is firmly bolted to the chassis, this means the ruler is parallel to where the bushing wants to be installed in order to not have any rotational pressure on the rubber when at the static ride height. Once you know this angle you can then install the bushing at that angle. In the specific instance in my previous post this meant the bushing needed to be rotated about 15-20 degrees clockwise. On the right side of the car it would have been 15-20 degrees counter clockwise. Here’s another pic I found really quick on google showing a bushing which has been “clocked”. As you can see if you hold the straight edge up to the tab on the bushing it is now NOT in alignment with the angle of the arm but it will be in alignment with the chassis which is what you want.
There has been a lot of debate about the poly bushings in regard to design, not material. Honestly, I don’t know for sure whether they are good or bad. There’re a lot of people who have said they don’t allow for the proper movement needed which was designed by Honda, other people say that’s BS. Seems like there are legit people on both sides of the argument.
I know people who have used the ES/Prothane style bushings and never had complaints, but they also no longer use them and now are running OEM style or spherical. For me, considering the very wide availability of OEM style and spherical bushings I simply don’t see any reason to bother with the other ones simply since there might be a downside to them.
well… i think i have made a decision for myself… i think the hard race bushings are the best buy… just like an oem upgrade basically… since its not poly, wont have to worry about binding. just be sure to clock it correctly and it should be like having an OEM+ bushing… right?
Yup. But iirc Hardrace doesn’t make a DA bushing so you’ll need to use DC trailing arms or reuse the metal sleeve from your OEM bushings, press the EF Hardrace bushing into that sleeve, then press that whole assembly into your DA arms.
