I encountered some interesting steering rack bushings for the truck recently. They are advertised as polyurethane with billet aluminum sleeves. The factory units consist of a steel sleeve wrapped in very soft rubber. The ones on my truck are looking a little worse for wear and these new pieces were only fifty bucks, so I gave them a shot. They arrived today and I was kind of surprised to see that the bushings themselves are actually translucent. I've never seen clear poly bushings before.
They look cool and the billet sleeves are very lightweight. I hope they function as well as they look!
I also spent some more time on my lower control arms. For those of you who haven't been following along, the tubular lower control arms that I installed, had bump stops that were mounted way too high off the arm, thus limiting my front suspension travel down to maybe two inches (and this picture was taken after I added shorter bump stops).
A few months back, I got sick of bottoming out the suspension around corners and on uneven surfaces and cut the mounts off entirely.
Without the bump stops in place, the front suspension was using the tires and inner fender lips as bump stops, which was definitely not ideal. Last night, I made an attempt to remedy the situation. I cut and ground off the last of the welds that can be seen the the picture above, so the entire area was smooth. Then I marked and drilled a hole, centered under the part of the frame where the bump stops are supposed to make contact and inserted some new conical bump stops from Energy Suspension.
It turned out really nice, but I won't know if they're tall enough until I can drive it again. If they're too short, I can always try the taller, cylindrical ones that have grooves for trimming them down shorter if needed. This picture shows the suspension drooping with no weight on it, so while it looks like a lot of travel, everything rests a whole lot closer when it's on the ground.
I'm hoping to resume my brake system overhaul this weekend, but the weather is going to be super wet for a while. So even if I get it buttoned up, I may not be able to drive it for another week or more.
