I'm not an expert in plastics, but the recent thread on bushings allows me
the opportunity to show how little I know. Here goes. We all know how much
rubber bushings give, and sometimes thats OK for rough roads. Stiffer
suspensions want less bushing deflection and plastics are great, giving
very little, but more than aluminum/aluminium. Nylon is good, Delrin is
better because of its lower cold-flow. Polyurethane is about the same as
Nylon. Teflon is awful for cold-flow. A suspension bushed with Teflon would
very soon be sloppy. An interesting material to try would be Vespel, a
"hard" Teflon. I could see putting different bushing materials in various
places in the suspension, depending in what the anticipated loads would be.
Hard materials in the A-arm pivots and soft materials in the shock-loaded
areas, for example. Perhaps this clears things up a bit.
Philip E. Barnes '71 TR6 CC61193L
Cornell University
Newman Laboratory of Nuclear Studies
Ithaca, NY 14853
607-255-4951
peb3@cornell.edu
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