Ok, MJB is ignoring me.
Don't worry, I've been ignoring everyone equally the last little bit. Due to
various circumstances I'm even farther behind than usual in getting through it
all. But hey, I bet now that we won't have to hound users to clean up there
home directories until well into the start of school this fall.
If you want to find Nylatron, Delrin, etc, look in the yellow pages under
plastic. This assumes you live near a big enough city. There's about a half
dozen places in Salt Lake City that sell various shapes of plastic stock. But
be prepared to buy a 10 or 20 foot chunk, or pay a buck or two for cutting the
rod into smaller chunks. Actually, the one place I usuaully deal with often
has remnants of various sizes on hand. These work for me.
As to which material is best for susension bushings, I'd say that it depends
on how the bushing is used. A stock rubber bushing has the outer diameter
held in place by the hole in which it is mounted, and the inner diameter is
bonded to a metal tube. This tube is tightly clamped by the mounting bolt, so
all the up and down movement of the control arm is due to distorting the rubber
of the bushing itself. On serious racing vehicles, you have bushings where the
material of the bushing, often an easily machinable material softer than the
mounting bolts, is just used for locating. Or think of rod ends in this
application. Any up and down movement of the control arm is due to the bolt
or the eye of the rod end rotating, it is not from distortion of the bushing
material. Plastics fall somwehere between rubber and solid metal.
mjb.
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