MX-3.com

Anyone familiar with these? Opinions? Came across these bushings on ebay. Can't recall having seen bronzoil control arm bushings anywhere before & UBB search didn't bring up any related posts. Thanks.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=7905146559&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWA%3AIT

hmmm, I've never seen them before but they are definately interesting.... problem i've got with bronzoil is that under a lot of load it tends to wear which will eventually cause a loose bushing that's worse than stock.... correct me if I'm wrong though.

Well is seems skind of odd that the seller keeps calling it oil bronze,and not bronze oil,as if he dont even know what he's trying to sell

And by the picture(if you look at the reflections in the bushing)you can see the quality isnt that good...
Looks like something seller has tourned himselves on his backyard laithe

will that small steel sleeve in the middle keep the outside of the bronze-oil bushing from wearing? I can't see it but I'm no master at this stuff either. I also notice he's missing the shims required on 1 of the bushings, and that it's a kit of 2 to do both control arms, even though our control arms have 4 bushings....

Jeah i notissed that with only 2bushings allso,just forgot to mention it

Thanks all. Appreciate the feedback. Good points.

FYI The idea of a stainless sleeve makes no sense. Stainless will stick to the control arm bolt (I mean you will need a sledghammer to seperate the sleeve from the bolt after many months of use) + Bronze or whatever material the guy used will compress with time and loads making the sleeve loose.

Bronzoil material is intended to be used in high loads when you can sacrifice the material or in low loads of frequent usage.

Did you guys see what Vaughn posted about this in the eGroups forum?

Whats this e-groups forum? I'd like to read about this.

Nope because i dont know of that forum Lol,Why dont you tell us what he said?

Originally posted by JDM:
Did you guys see what Vaughn posted about this in the eGroups forum?

Thanks JDM for pointing me that way. So I found Vaughn's eGroup post on this & he was responding to the same ebay bronze-oil bushings question from someone else there. Here is Vaughn's response pasted from his email... (oops, didn't get his permission to reprint. Hope I didn't nned to...)

"With a set of these you better know how to weld. When you change to a harder bushing material you also change where and how the energy normally adsorbed by the stock rubber bushing is released. Since you no longer have rubber deflecting front to back every time the wheel hits a bump this twisting action now gets transmitted to the steel mounting hardware and attachment points. This shock load was not calculated by the factory engineers so as a result what happens this shock load is transmitted to parts of the frame where it was not intended fatiguing the metal in that area. In a track car this not as big of concern and the car is usually inspected every event and the thick layer of factory under coating has been removed that would hide any cracks. Even with Teflon or Nylatron bushing that still have a little rebound. I have seen and experienced separation of the attachment points for the bushing from the unibody. On a friend's VW the subframe has completely separated between the two mounting points so every time he or his wife would accelerate the car would start to turn left until it was TIG welded back together and braced. Even on my car with hard urethane I've had to weld stress cracks radiating out the rear attachment point that needed to be welded. Another problem with the bronze itself is that it cracks rather that compresses like rubber or polymer material When bronze cracks it tends to bind preventing it from moving freely which in turn may cause the suspension to skip and hop over bumps. In motorsport I'm not even sure that bronze bushing would pass tech inspection. On the street in a weekend ride would could get away with Teflon or Nylatron bushing but on a daily driver almost everybody I know has gone back to OE rubber or aftermarket Urethane bushings to get rid of the hassle of broken bolts and welding structural metal back together every couple months."

Vaughn Nishimura
Laguna Blue '93 2.5L V-6 MX-3GS
and Laguna Blue '92 1.6L(8V)SOHC 323SE

Originally posted by T-Rose:
Whats this e-groups forum? I'd like to read about this.

This link is for the group JDM referenced...
http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/mazdamx-3owners/

and this link is for every MX-3 group listed from a search on yahoo...
http://autos.dir.groups.yahoo.com/dir/Recreation___Sports/Automotive/Makes_and_Models/Mazda/MX-3?show_groups=1

The old boys remember when it was egroups, before they were bought out by yahoo.

Sorry, my bad, I still refer to it as eGroups, I guess it's long time I got used to the Yahoo thing.