I have mentioned this before, But I am starting to see a pattern that is quite disturbing.......
We have installed energy suspension bushings in the past and figured we were doing a good thing.
I can now tell you with strong confidence that I believe these bushings are dangerous!
That ES bushing fits nice and tight.....At first you might think this is a good thing.........But I can assure you it is not.
The stock bushings have a lot of compliance and allows the lower control arm to move freely.
The ES Bushing fit firmly.....You want the tension rod to have minimal or no movement back and forth, But the ES Bushing limits the side to side twist needed to allow the lower control arm to move freely.
Because the ES bushing is holding the tension rod from twisting, as the lower control arm moves up and down it stresses the metal in the control arm causing the lower control arms to crack and break.
When I saw the second car with both lower control arms cracked and ready to break, I made mention of it here on the forum. Since that time I am seeing lower control arm failures all the time.
The latest failure caused the customer to loose control of his car and hit a curb. Luckily minimal damage was done.
The pattern seems to be that the arms are failing on cars that have had the ES bushings installed for about 4 years.For any and all of you that have ES tension rod bushings I would highly recommend changing out the bushing with either stock or changing to a bearing style adjustable tension rod that allows the proper travel and does not stress the lower control arm. For any of my own personal local customers, I would really like to get these bushings off your cars if you have them as soon as possible.
I will offer free labor to replace the ES bushings with a better designed part if I have installed the ES bushings on your car in the past.
We have adjustable tension rods in stock or you can bring something in and we will still do the labor for free if we installed ES on your car in the past. The symptoms of the lower control arms being cracked are creaking sounds up front when doing slow braking and vague feeling steering response. At the very least if you have ES tension rod bushing please inspect your lower control arms around in the area around the bolt holes for the tension rod.
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