Reassembly of spring plates with new bushes

Gary71 · Post by **Gary71** » Fri Mar 11, 2005 10:37 am

Hopefully someone can offer some guidance on this one!

I'm about to reassemble the back end of my 911 and the new spring plate rubber bushes (Weitmeister / Neatrix) I have fitted are a spectacularly tight fit into the body and the new cover brackets.

With most suspension bushes you only tighten the centre clamp bolt once the vehicle is at normal ride height so you don't preset the rubber bush, so I really don't want to press the bushes into the body with the trailing arm in the lowered position. I might end up shearing the bushes on the first big bump.

I could jack the spring plate up to around normal ride height then pull the outer cover on with long bolts, gradually switch to shorter ones, then finally the correct ones once the plate is home. Problem is with the inner bush only just on the edge of the body the torsion bar is only engaged by about 3mm, so I really don't trust it to stay put when I put a jack under the spring plate.

Any ideas? Thanks.

Luke · Post by **Luke** » Fri Mar 11, 2005 11:04 am

Gary,

You've got he right idea, what I did was cover the outer bush with plenty of silicone grease and mount the spring plate cover onto the outer bush. Then put the spring plate on at the correct un-sprung angle, use some long bolts and slowly pull the spring plate into postion. As long as you use plenty of silicone grease on all surfaces you won't have a problem inserting the spring arm in its relaxed postion and the bush will not "sheer".

Gary71 · Post by **Gary71** » Fri Mar 11, 2005 11:55 am

Thanks Luke,

Do the lubricated bushes now rotate against the body and outer cover as the suspension operates? Is this how they are designed to work or just what we end up having to do to be able to fit them!

I just have a feeling they will wear out pretty rapidly if the bush turns in the body whilst driving?

Guess I'll just change them again in ten years time!

Luke · Post by **Luke** » Fri Mar 11, 2005 12:02 pm

they do rotate a little in the housing but the neatrix compound gives a bit of flex too, more than a typical polybush

Gary71 · Post by **Gary71** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 9:44 am

Well it all went together OK on the LHS...

However the right side....

I was using some long M10 studding to push the outer cover onto the outer bush and the inner bush into the body...all seemed fine the outer cover went over the bush nicely, then the inner bush started to move into the body...

I carried on doing the bolts up from outside the car, without really looking...

Looked in to check and found that the inner bush had stuck and the cover was now bent top and bottom...

Levering the outer cover back off to try and fix it has pulled the bush half off the spring plate. Now I'm stuck as the bush won't go through the hole in the quarter panel with the cover attached to it...

At this point I went to bed. I'll attack again tonight.

Gary71 · Post by **Gary71** » Wed Apr 13, 2005 1:39 pm

Finally got it back together, just used even more grease!

However despite my best efforts at marking up the body work to refit the plates in the correct position I'm now running an inch too low at the back.

Will moving up one outer spline correct this? or do I need to start on moving the inner spline as well?

Tips appreciated as I don't want to rebuild this again more than once!