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Bushings and Spherical bearings or Heim Joints
Although replacing your bushings with harder ones is not absolutely necessary, they do not cost that much and they do help by keeping your alignment consistent under hard loading. They can also help reduce wheelhop which can break drivetrain parts. You can get replacement bushings for most cars from many sources like Energy Suspension, Whiteline and Super Poly Pro. Harder or solid bushings are particularly useful in Nissan S chassis in the subframe as these bushings can shift as much as ½ inch under load.
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| Energy Suspension makes urethane bushings for most cars. |
Urethane tends to squeak and we have had good luck prevent this by using silicone grease and wrapping the inner pivot tubes or bolts with Teflon tape when installing.
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| Solid, hard urethane flexes much less than softer rubber with voids. Less flex means more accurate response to steering input and truer alignment under load. |
Many popular cars like Nissan S chassis have spherical bearing kits and adjustable arms with spherical bearings or Heim joints. For pure drifting use these are awesome as they have less friction and zero compliance. They do require maintenance and frequent checking for looseness so they are perhaps not the greatest for daily driving.
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| If you have a popular car like a Nissan S chassis you can buy awesome suspension links that are adjustable and have flex free, low friction spherical bearings instead of bushings. |
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| Walker Wilkerson uses SPL links in his S13. |
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| Matt Powers S14 uses Parts Shop Max links. |
