Now that I am in the midst of tracking down a fair clunk in my winter-ravaged suspension, I have realized that over the last 200K kms or so that I've had my Eibach springs installed, that their presence in the otherwise stock suspension has put an undesigned twist to the front A-arm bushes as well as the sway bar bushes. For those that recall, the front A-arm bushes are installed in the arms at a particular angle designed to put the bush at an "at-rest" and unstressed position when the car's attitude is as designed. Drop the car 40mm like the Eibachs did on my '02 then that difference in angle will twist the bush the same as a 40mm compression would do on a stock suspension. Unlike the latter which would be instantaneous albeit frequent, a lowered car would twist the bush at rest and with any suspension compression at all. The same situation occurs with the sway bar since Volvo so "wisely" vulcanizes the bushes to the bar instead of making them free floating. So basically other than when the car goes quite light, those bushes will be under stress with a more or less permanent twist.

How much reduction in life of the bush does this twist cause? Not sure, because our weather and road conditions are also not kind to rubber suspension bushes so contributing factors to possible accelerated wear. So far I'm on my second set of A-arm bushes at 373K but this current set looks to be getting close to needing replacement. The front sway bar bushes are original and, amazingly compared to the original rear bushes, still attached to the bar; but they have twisted in the brackets and appear to be causing the clunk I'm hearing. In the rear, the twisting effects do not appear to be as extreme although I replaced the rear sway bar bushes with poly some time ago. Those poly replacements are wearing well after a bit less than 100K on them.

In preparation for my A-arms needing replaced I built a set of used OEM arms I had laying around with a new set of Lemforder bushes. On the front, insted of using the specified angle of installation I made the mounting surface perpendicular to the forging seam on the A-arm. This is about right with the arms position at rest so that no twist is introduced. The front sway bar bushes will be replaced with poly.

Any road, I thought I would mention it as an awareness for anyone not running stock ride height on their XC. Obviously anyone with a car that is jacked, the same twist, albeit in the opposite direction, will also be there.

Cheers,

Bill