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They had rain at the hillclimb race I run over in Robbinsville (well, when I have a car that moves, anyways). 10 people wrecked bad enough on the first day that they were out of the competition, including the more experienced drivers. The guy who won was driving a $500k Pirelli World Challenge Porsche cup car, and ran an absolutely stupid time (he nearly tied the course record IN THE RAIN, and he is the current record holder with his old Porsche cup car).

 
I got coal rolled on yesterday by an F350. There were two left turning lanes and this guy was already in the left lane. I got on the right lane since I was taking the right exit after the turn. The light turns green, and we both proceed to make the left. Naturally, the guy is in front of me since he was on the inside lane but then decides to take up both lanes and spews a crap load of black smoke on me. It freaked out my wife, but I just kept going since I had read about these db's before.

Anyway, he takes the right exit I was also taking and takes off like a bat out of hell on the highway. I catch up to him at the next exit since there is a line of cars taking the on ramp we are both taking. After getting on the next highway, he stays in the right lane going slow, I pass him in the middle lane and luckily he didn't do anything else.

I have no idea what I did to piss him off. I'd heard of them doing that on a Prius, but on a Touareg?

 
Bee got his first ride on a tow truck this morning. I tried to upgrade some bushings yesterday and absolutely could not get the OEM ones out. They were so stuck that I actually broke 3 screwdrivers trying to pry them out (which was the recommended removal technique per the install instructions). All of my attempts to remove it resulted in a mangled bushing that could not be reused, and it left my driveshaft and differential disassembled. Only option that was left was to have it towed to a shop and have the shop finish it.

 
Suspension bushings? I have never in my life come across a pressed in OEM suspension bushing that didn't need to be either burned out, pressed out, or removed with an air chisel.

 
Differential bushings. I would have gladly used a press if I had one. The cradle bushings weren't quite as bad because I could at least get those ones cut out.

BK029_image1_large.jpg


 
Yep, that falls into the "NFW" category. I prefer air chisel for those. I've seen many an ear cracked off otherwise...

 
Yep, and not easy to support. I always cringe when I have to press bearings in and out of my RX7 hubs, because they are awkwardly shaped. A lot of bushings come with a steel outer sleeve, especially rubber ones. On a lot of older diffs, those would rust to the ears in the housing. We would burn the bushing out, and then you would take the air chisel to try and split the bushing sleeve or collapse it inward to remove it. Tough to do until you've done it a few times. I make life easy and use heims and double shear tabs whenever I can...

 
Yep, and not easy to support. I always cringe when I have to press bearings in and out of my RX7 hubs, because they are awkwardly shaped. A lot of bushings come with a steel outer sleeve, especially rubber ones. On a lot of older diffs, those would rust to the ears in the housing. We would burn the bushing out, and then you would take the air chisel to try and split the bushing sleeve or collapse it inward to remove it. Tough to do until you've done it a few times. I make life easy and use heims and double shear tabs whenever I can...
And the other issue was that the aluminum OEM housing was stronger than the metal used on the differential. Any time I would try to hit the screwdriver in as a wedge it would dig into the differential before doing anything to the aluminum housing.

 
Car is fixed. Differential bushings done, removed the aftermarket trailing arms, checked everything else, and now Bee drives like it's supposed to. Now to figure out what the hell I'm going to do with a set of $300 trailing arms that don't work...

 
What's wrong with them?
No clue. All I know is that when they were removed all of the problems went away. Something allowed the front connection to move under loading. We tried tightening the bolts more, tried shims, and nothing worked.

 
Do you have a picture of the offending parts? Or even a link so I can see the design?

 
What were the problems that when away? Johnny joints are not very prone to failure without a history of wear. I wonder if there is an issue on the pickup point of the chassis?

 
I think it's a combo of two issues:

1) The bolt has a smaller diameter than the hole in the ferrule (0.46" bolt vs 0.50" opening, the OEM bushing opening is 0.48")

2) The ferrule is too short.

There are spacers on either end of the ferrule (held in place with the ziptie in the pic above), I think those spacers are too big and prevent the bolt from properly "clamping" the ferrule in the chassis. Then, any movement is accented by the fact the bolt is smaller than the ferrule. One thought I had was possible running without the spacers, but they included them for a reason, right?

 
Here is what they look like installed. The trailing arm is the lower one in the pic and the joint that is moving is on the left:

2010-camaro-rear-trailing-control-arms-poly-bushings-c10-201-8_1_1_1.jpg


 
Did they not provide replacement hardware? Many of the aftermarket manufacturers will have you drill out the mounting locations for 1/2" hardware, rather than OEM metric. I can tell you from experience, a 12mm bolt in a 1/2" hole will move A LOT more than you would ever imagine, and will clunk around.

 
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