The outer Delrin spring plate bushings are too deep, and they bind when you tighten down the trailing link over the spring plate. I may not have noticed this, except Ray had the same problem with his car this spring. They went in tight in his car, but we figured this was normal, and put everything together. His rear suspension was bound so tight you can see his rear tires bouncing off the ground in the video from Gateway. We had to take everything apart, and have them turned down shorter, which solved the problem. Th pre-assembled rear suspension I picked up at an estate auction (unused) has these bushings, with the same issue. Everything's good until I tighten down the trailing link's 4 bolts over the spring plate, and then it binds hard, and you can't rotate the spring plate relative to the torsion tube. Anyone have any thoughts on how to shorten this a bit w/o have to press it back off of the spring plate! I suppose I could sand it by hand

Dr. K,

We decided to open them up and shorten them. I know it's a bunch of work, but look into the future. It's too cold for you to race for a while. You can fit this little project in, can't you? If you want to pull them off and send them to me, we can open them up and shorten them for you. We removed ours with a wood chisel, since we knew that we would clean up that surface while shortening.

Let me know.

Thanks Carl.

We got them to fit with lots of fussy filing and sanding. They're snug, but we can move the spring plate by hand.

crap... i think i have the same problem with my poly bushings... it was so much work and i really dont want to do it again.

We've now seen this in al of the R.E. bushings. After talking with some more yesterday, I'm going to redo the rears so that they pivot on the inner surface instead of the outer. This is how VFC did my previous car, and that did work well.

I had similar issues with the Welt poly bushings, but 3/32" (approx)washers inserted between the chassis mounts and the torsion tube (4 bolts per side)allows for a smooth movement with the spring plate.