Compliance bushing are one of those modifications that you didn’t know you needed, until you do it and then you immediately think… Why didn’t I do this sooner?
Upgrading your compliance bushing can make a drastic impact on your cars handling characteristics because OEM soft rubber suspension bushings are simply not designed for the racetrack. They are designed for comfort, consistency during all driving conditions, and longevity. Auto manufactures must sacrifice ultimate performance for ultimate comfort and reliability because, this is what 99% of consumers want. For the 1% of us that are looking to squeeze every ounce of performance, the soft rubber compliance bushing has no business being on a road course or a drag strip. The amount of deflection, distortion, and deformation that a rubber bushing has, causes:
- Torque steer (in a FWD platform).
- Wheel hop (in a FWD platform).
- Dynamic toe change.
- Less precise steering.
- Dull/numb braking feel.
And the harder you push your car the more prevalent these issues become.
The unfortunate downsides to upgraded compliance bushings/bearings are: There is quite a bit more NVH (noise, vibration, harshness) when you upgrade to a stiffer rubber/polyurethane or spherical bearing and for most, the NVH is too much to surmount, especially on a daily driver. The other downside is longevity. In most cases you will probably sell your car before you’ll ever need replace the OEM bushings on it. But aftermarket upgraded ones are not designed to last as long, especially when there is frequent heavy use involved. Most people that are thinking about upgrading their compliance bushings are looking to extract the absolute most from their car in some sort of competitive nature.
Since Pat’s car is RWD, there is no wheel hop or torque steer that needs to be reduced. But there are still benefits that he will notice, such as…
- Increased stability under hard braking. This is because there is less flex (no flex with spherical bushings) in the suspension arms, thus keeping the alignment correct. By keeping the alignment correct even under hard braking, this means that the toe is not increasing or decreasing as you brake hard or get back on the gas. With rubber bushings as you brake hard the toe will increase/decrease and cause your car to become unstable.
- More direct steering input. Again, same theory applies here because when you move the steering wheel there is less “slop” in the suspension and now your steering inputs can be more precise and direct. There is less of a need to adjust steering wheel position when entering the turn, hitting the apex, or exiting.
- Improved brake response and pedal feel. This is because there is less braking energy lost by not having soft rubber bushings. The OEM rubber busing allow the suspension to flex and therefore, when the suspension flexes, some energy is lost in distorting the rubber. Now if you replace the rubber with a spherical bearing, there is zero amount of movement allowed by the spherical bearing. This means there is no brake energy lost in distorting the rubber bushing, so now you are getting 100% of the braking to each wheel, effectively making the brakes more efficient
All three benefits will help prevent the car from being unsettled as you enter or exit turns. This helps build your confidence and increases the predictability of the car. Certain benefits may be more prevalent on RWD compared to a FWD platform or vice versa. Whatever platform you have, once you have installed upgraded compliance bushings, either stiffer rubber/polyurethane or spherical, you’re definitely going to notice the improvements right away.
For me though, the thing that was most noticeable was the brake responsiveness. I barley have to press the brake pedal to get the car to slow down or stop. For example, after installing some on my EG, as I pulled up to the stop sign at the end of my street, I nearly flew through the front window because the car had stopped so much quicker than when it had OEM rubber compliance bushings. This of course was because I was still applying the same amount of pedal pressure as I needed when I had OEM rubber compliance bushings. It took me a few blocks, but I eventually recalibrated the muscle memory for applying pressure to the brake pedal and now I can smoothly come to a stop. Sometimes though, if I don’t drive the EG for a while then get back in, it takes me a few stop signs to remember how little pedal pressure is needed to stop the car.
Enough small talk let’s get to the actual install process.
A while back, we installed the Ballade Sports, spherical compliance bushings on Pat’s S2000. But, because of other big projects going on in the garage, work, and the craziness of life I am only now posting this article.
Below are the pictures documenting the install process along with instructions on how to do it on an S2000.
Pat’s car is so underrated and vanilla looking… That, however, might be my favorite thing about his car though. To the untrained eye, his car doesn’t look like anything special and might even be considered a “simple” build. But, as you’ll notice in the pictures below, his car is truly a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Below is what the compliance bushings look like. Some of you may be thinking… Why Ballade Sports ones, isn’t Ballade basically just Alibaba parts. Yes, to some extent you are correct, most Ballade items are designed by them and then sourced from another country. I’m not here to argue about Ballade quality one way or the other. In the past we have used some things from Ballade, and they have been great, and other not so great. These are no Kingpin Machine spherical bearing, but they are a fraction of the price.
When it comes to spherical bearings, the downside to “cheaper” ones is that their tolerances aren’t as tight on the bearings, which can cause more noise in the suspension. More clunks, ticks, and overall rattles. Another downside is that their material used to make them is less quality and can wear out much sooner.
When I say wearing out sooner, I’m not talking about a few months… No, no, you’ll still get your money’s worth, it’s just that they won’t last for years and years. Let’s be honest though, this upgrade should only be for a “weekend warrior” or dedicated track car. Not a car that you plan to drive 100k miles on.
And lastly, these are soo easy to install that even if they do wear out quick, we can simply buy another pair and install them in about an hours’ time.
It’s been quite a while since Pat’s car has been in my garage for some work. Especially since we have spent the better part of the last 8 months building Ever’s S2000.
As always, we start off by jacking the car up. The car only needs to be up in the front, so two jack stands will be fine.
Remove the front wheel.
Wheel comes off.
Then, ponder life and wonder if it’s all really worth it… I mean, is spending every last dollar you have on your car really worth it? YES! yes, it is.
Here is the location of the compliance bushing on an S2000. However, on most car FWD/RWD it is in the same general location. It’s essentially where the lower control arm bolts to the chassis.
and a close up.
Is this VTEC heaven?
Start by loosening the bolt at the compliance bushing.
Then remove the bolt where the lower control arm mounts to the subframe.
Then, specifically for S2000’s, you’re going to unbolt the lower ball joint from the spindle. If you are doing this on another chassis, you might need to pop the lower ball joint out of the LCA or Spindle. But on the S2000 platform the lower ball joint simply bolts on/off.
Next, you are going to remove the lower shock bolt.
Lastly, you will need to disconnect the front sway bar from the endlink. By doing this you have successfully removed all attaching points of the lower control arm and it is now ready for removal.
Below is a good picture of how the lower ball joint simply unbolts.
With everything now unbolted, the lower control arm should come out.
With the lower control arm removed you can now see the OEM rubber compliance bushing. Pat’s chassis has 240k miles on it so there is no surprise he has some cracking in the rubber. However, they are not as “blown out” as expected on such a high millage car.
With the whole arm removed you can now press out the OEM compliance bushing.
Below is a good comparison of the OEM (left) and the Spherical (right)
Now simply press in the new spherical bearing. Make sure to use some lube to lessen the chance of binding when being pressed in.
Make sure it’s completely seated.
Voila! This is what it looks like all pressed in.
When reinstalling the eccentric bolt, make sure to use some anti-seize. On S2000’s specifically, this eccentric bolt is known for being seized on and will fight you when removing. Your future self will thank you.
Now slap the arm back in and reattach it at each mounting point.
Pause and look at the Civic Type R!
Keep in mind that when you install compliance bushings, you will need to get an alignment right away.
Side note! make sure when you run two different styles of wheels you ensure that there is brake caliper clearance on both styles. Pat goofed when swapping from his 17×10 wheels to his 17×9.5 wheels and self clearanced his Stoptech c43 kit. Hence why he now has a 2mm spacer on.
You’ll need to jack up the spindle to get the coilover lined up with the hole on the lower control arm and also the sway bar endlink lined up too.
after reattaching the lower control arm to the chassis, ensure you have also reinstalled the lower ball joint bolts, shock bolt, swaybar endlink.
Here you can see what the spherical compliance bushing looks like installed.
Now we move on to the other side. I always recommend doing one side at a time, that way, you always know how it is supposed to go back together because you can always reference what the side you haven’t touched looks like.
That BBK is no joke!
As you can see below there is a lot of “heavy duty” tools being used. Dead blow hammer, pry bar, breaker bar and large punch. This is because you may need to slightly “persuade” some parts of the lower control arm to get it removed. However, there is only slight persuasion needed and the only reason we used those larger tools was just to ensure we didn’t get frustrated.
both sides are done and the car is back on the ground.
Why not replace all rubber bushings with sphericals? While having all spherical bearings would be the absolute best when it comes to having a race/track car, it’s just not entirely necessary. The compliance bushings do most of the “heavy lifting” when it comes to suspension compliance, and for that reason it’s just not cost effective to replace all rubber bushings with sphericals.
As with any modification that you do there will be some subjectivity, and this is no different with the compliance bushing upgrade. The words I type above are Mine and Pat’s firsthand experiences with upgrading the compliance bushings and the benefits we noticed. If, for example have a brand-new car with zero miles on it, you might not notice a drastic as an improvement as I noticed when I changed out mine on my EG with 300k miles on the chassis. However, most of you reading this aren’t going to be installing them on a brand-new car and even if you were… I’m confident you would still notice a positive improvement.
Also, installing a spherical bearing is going to yield much more noticeable improvements than you would observe if you were just installing polyurethane bushings. But when installing spherical bearings, you are also going to detect much more NVH than if you had just done polyurethane. Either one you choose though; you are going to notice improvements.
Additionally, just because you upgrade your compliance bushings doesn’t mean you have to stop driving your car daily. Pat has been driving his daily for 8 months now and there are no negatives other than the increased NVH, and of course… NVH is very, very subjective.
If you are interested in reading about the installation process on a FWD car…below is a link from when I installed PCI sphericals on my 4 door EK.
As always, I hope you enjoyed the read and managed to learn a thing or two. Don’t let the NVH scare you away from doing this modification, I still highly recommend doing this upgrade because it truly does make a significant difference. And it will really help increase your confidence in the car when pushing it to the limits. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, gripes, or just wanted to say hi… I would love to hear from you; you can reach out to me via email, Billy@functiontheory.com or DM me on Instagram @Functiontheory, or lastly just comment on the post below and I will get back to you.