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I went back to stock bushings. BTW I love everything I've purchased from Hotchkis so far but their poly bushing were way over sized for my LCA's and could not be installed even with a press, Moogs were perfect fit. Would be nice to have a properly designed replacement LCA's that use bearing instead of bushing no?



I had the same problem with the Energy poly LCA bushing I installed in 1998.

I had to carefully sand off material around the OD of the poly bushing.

On the LCA other shell, I sandpaper scrolled and die grinder buffer attachment polished the ID. Like sanding then polishing an aluminum intake.

On the stock pin you have to leave the original inner rubber bushing sleeve. I did that and polished that on a buffer to a mirror finish.

After all that I would press together with force. Been running those since 1998 and 40K+ miles. Took it apart in 2010 to put Hotchkis stuff on. Showed it to Hotchkis and they said it was still fine and to run it.

Back in 1988 most all the poly bushings available were not made with shells installed on them. Most all came like the Mopar LCA polys where you use the old shells from the old rubber bushings. Guldstrand Engineering sold, installed, and manufactured (for them) custom poly bushing inserts.

Problem with those insert-only poly bushing was the variability in the thickness of the shells in aftermarket rubber bushings. The metal shells you reused, would not all have the same ID or OD. Guldstrand would have over the counter parts customers every once in a while that would not be able to press the insert-only bushings together. It was a big PITA for them. In about 1992 Guldstrand was selling the new Energy bushings that had the poly inserts with shells manufactured around them.

BTW in 1990 Guldstrand was designing a Corvette supercar called the GS90 (ala Hennessy). The young hot shot car designer from the famed Pasadena Art Center Design.... a young John Hotchkis. I remember John walking around the old Culver City shop in the typical lab coat all Guldstrand employee wore. Fast forward 25 years, I've seen John Hotchkis walk around his own prototype shop in a labcoat sticking out like a sore thumb. ONLY ONE in the shop wearing a labcoat.