Stock LCA+UCA grease nipple install

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ShortyNavros

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Hey guys,

So I just replaced all my stock front control arms with poly suspension bushes from SuperPro, I know when you install them you grease them up, but keeping them grease in the future is my worry.

I was thinking about installing a grease nipple on each control arm where each bush is (8 in total, 4 per side). My only issue is, to alleviate any squeak ideally you need to get the grease to the he interface of the bolt and inner crush tube as this is where the friction force occurs (correct me if I am wrong?).

So to get grease to this point I would need to drill through the control arm outer casing, then the poly bush and then the crush tube (not sure how easy that last bit is to do).

I see the aftermarket UCAs have grease nipples on them but I am assuming the only go through the outer surface and apply grease to outer surface of the poly bush, which is pretty useless as this part should not move (movement occurs at the bolt and crush tube, again correct me if I am wrong?)

Can anyone give me advice on this to keep my new poly bushes nice and greased up.

Cheers,
Alex
 
Shorty , the grease nipple on the Calmini's is in the middle of where the 2 poly bushes meet--grease goes to the working faces and not to the outside
 
also i believe its the bush that pivots around the crush tube. not the tube pivoting around the bolt.

when installing you're meant to grease the outside of the crush tube and inside of the bushing.
 
Okay cool cheers for the info.. well the LCA poly bushes are two piece so putting a grease nipple bang in the middle of the outer casing should get grease between the two poly bush pieces. And the uca bushes are one piece cotton reel style bushes, but as Ben says the bushes rotates against the casing a create nipple in the middle should suffice for lubrication.
Ben there is grease on them as they have just been newly installed, but that won't last forever hence why I want to install grease nipples for the future when I need to regrease them
 
Hey guys,

Just thinking about how the grease nipples are setup on the rear shackles, the grease is put in through the end of a bolt which has an opening in the middle of the bolt, this means the grease is being applied between the metal crush tube and bolt, surely this would be the frictional surface where the bush piviots? If not why would you apply grease here is the bush pivots around the crush tube?

Shorty
 
i'm not sure the shackle bushes have a crush tube.
i believe the 'bolt' is more like a pin with threaded ends that goes straight through the bushes and pivots inside them. but i could be wrong, its been a while since i fitted mine.
 
Okay I am still stuck on this, as an update I have installed the grease nipples on the LCAs. The rear ones work perfect, but the front ones not so much. The LCA poly bushes are 2 piece so putting a grease fitting in the middle of the bush lines it up with the break between the two parts of the bush allowing grease to get to the crush tube. The problem with the front part section of the LCA is that it has soem sort of hole inside the LCA body istelf and so when you squirt grease in most goes round the bush and out the other side contained inside the body of the LCA, oh well not much I can do, I did try to drill a passage underneath the grease fitting in an attempt to make an easier passge for grease to get the crush tube, not sure if it has done anything though.

I am still on the fence with the UCA grease fittings, I bought some 45 deg elbow style ones to attach to the same place on the factory LCA as calmini does. Now my problem is the super pro poly bush in my UCAs is a one piece cotton reel type of deal so if I put a grease fitting in it means the grease will only get to the outer surface of the bush. So to get the grease to where the crush tube is, I assume it is best to drill a hole through the bush itself to get allow a passage to get to the crush tube. Now this should work better than on the LCA as I installed the fittings while the LCA was on the car so my passage I made was probably not real clear. SO when I remove my UCAs I can drill a nice straight hole through the bush with the crush tube removed and I can clear out any excess debris in there. Is this the best way to go about it? The only other option I can see is making the UCA alignment bolts greaseable by drilling out the centres and drilling a perpendicular hold half way down and tapping a grease fitting to the head of the bolt, although this will just put grease on the inside of the tube which I think is not the idea as the frictional surface is between the bush and crush tube. Gunna ask a suspension mob for their thoughts as well
 
I have tried searching the net but I can find very little info of fitting grease fittings to keep poly bushes lubed. I know they have lube on them when you install them but eventually he grease needs to be re-applied and taking the whole thing apart seems like a heap of effort, grease fittings would make the whole process so much easier.
 
the rears work differently, the bush pivots the pin this need lube, hence the reason for going from the end and the shackle pin having holes it for the grease to come out.

the front the two tabs the are welded to the chassis compress on the crush tube (hence the name) and the bush pivots on that, greasing from the outside of the uca is still the same Principal as the rear, it just come in from a different place.

make sense??

cheers
bryan
 
Yep it does. But will I need to bore a hole through a cotton reek one piece type bush to get the grease to the crush tube?
 

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