Replacement door bushes

Technical Area Body, Interior & Styling
2

Are these bushes that are sometimes sold as increasing chassis rigidity just expensive snake oil?

I’ve picked Moss for no particular reason, lots of people sell them;

http://www.moss-europe.co.uk/bush-set-door-bushings-delrin-garagestar-pair-910-800.html 

If you’ve sunk sixty quid or so in a couple of pieces of solid mounded plastic with some bolts what have they done for your ride? 

You could get a very nice bottle of malt for that sort of outlay…

3

I’m with you, i just don’t see why or what the point is!
ÂŁ60 will more than fill my tank and fish and chips by the sea.

4

New Mazda hinges are only ÂŁ12. I think the comment from Moss were tounge in cheek.

5

woah what a load of bunkem. Chassis rigidity BS.
Worn rubbers? swap your driver for passenger and vice versa and ta dah another 20 odd years of rattle free life.

and enjoy the malt.

6

Well I replaced the worn bushes on my old Eunos with a new pair of standard ones and it stopped the squeaks and rattles and most certainly felt more solid to me. I do believe that replacing worn ones with new will increase rigidity. I don’t believe that any ‘uprated’ ones will make any further difference.

7

 

 Swap side to side and upside down will sort those rattles for another 20 years as said above. Same as you can change over your pedal rubbers before they split trough on the corner 

8

That’s exactly what I did! As the weight of the door is more on the top than the bottom of the bush, the underside is usually perfect, by swapping sides you are starting afresh! 

Barrie

 

1 Like
9

I have no idea about rigidity.

But I bought the moss ones when they were on a very good discount. The make the car doors feel a lot better and the rattles have gone.

What has also happened is a certain amount of scuttle shake I had on harder acceleration over rough ground (especially coming out of corners) has also all but gone. Now before I bought the bushes I could see the door moving in the aperture on the passenger side. The hinges on that side are fine, so it was the bushes. 

I have no idea if the stock bushes would have done the same.

But I did see an improvement in rigidity that is quantifiable to me after fitting them.

10

They take them very seriously over on mx5nutz!   

11

Not mine

To be fair, the replacement bushings are not a like for like replacement; you are not replacing old rubber with new rubber, but with Delrin, which doesn’t compress.

There is a misunderstanding of what the door wedge, as Mazda calls it, is supposed to do. Leave it off, and the door rattles like a banshee.When the door is closed, the wedge compresses against the dovetail striker (the “cup”), and pushes out due to the rubber elasticity, taking the rattle out. Yes, the wedges do wear in some cars on the top edge. After 25 years, the rubber has probably hardened a bit, and not as eleastic. Replacements are cheap from Mazda.

The Delrin blocks usually have to be trimmed to fit, and even then, door is often difficult to shut; no elasticity (one wonders what is then giving, the dovetail distorting, or the sill panel.

The inspiration for this modification comes from TRD Door Stabilizer kit for the Hachiroku, which works in a completely different way, but which is also intended to take the tolerance out of the door latch, improving body stiffness and turn in.

Some have reported apparent benefits from "squeezing the cup2.

12

Hmm, I had forgotten about TRD until now.

One of the three Mk2.5 MX5s I test drove a couple of years ago had the TRD mod to the door catches, with both the surround of the loop on the pillars and the ramps on the door.  There were also packers on the hinges.  The seller made a point of it saying how great it was, how much it stiffened up the car.  I didn’t notice any difference from the previous two NBs.  Maybe the rest of the car was flexing because of all the rust underneath. Two more NBs later and I upped my budget and only looked at NCs, none of which had the TRD bits and all of which felt ever so much stiffer.

13

Crickey!  They’ve gone up in price. I paid less than a third of that last year, and Moss UK sourced them for me via their US division. Exchange rate must be worse than I thought. I certainly wouldn’t spend that amount on them.

Do they make a difference? No idea really, but they needed replacing, and were the same price as OE ones. So yes, car is quieter with them, but OE may have had the same effect.  Maybe I can pull another 2g in a corner…?

14

Fitted new delrin bushes today. Great improvement for little outlay.