Excess Rear Wheel Camber ????

[nkemp]

Here are two pictures of the bushings. Most of the inner sleeves easily push in/out and most came out of the outer sleeve pretty easy (only one took more than a few seconds). Notice how some are very deformed. Also, the rubber is fairly plyable ... but this is hard to compare to a new one with inner and outer sleeves.
Bushings on end.jpgBushings on side.jpg

[Mark D]

Wow that is some serious bushing wear. It almost looks like they were subjected to extreme heat or had some kind of chemical reaction with all that mushrooming. Or they're just really really dry rotted.

The process of making the bushings involves vulcanizing the rubber to the inner and outer sleeves so normally it's next to impossible to separate the inner and outer parts without destroying the rubber in between. For the rubber to just slide out from the outer sleeve in one piece is pretty amazing.

I'd be checking over the rest of the rubber parts on the car (hoses, seals, front suspn bushings, etc) to make sure the other rubber parts aren't similarly aged.

[nkemp]

About 30 years ago, the car got restored. The PO drove it in MN winters and the frame suffered as a result. Most of the car was powder coated including many small parts and things like the suspension components. I suspect that the bushings went through the powder coating process which may have damaged them. As indicated earlier in this thread, the car seemed to get more camber as time went on. At first the car was fine but in recent years it was really noticeable. At first I thought it was the springs compressing since everything felt "firm". Now I suspect those springs were fine (I installed the DMCH springs/shocks in an attempted fix ... plus I wanted the newer shocks).

I don't recall how the front suspension was powder coated but that is another project for the near future.