1952-59 Ford 56 sway bar bushings

Are these supposed to just slide over? Any tricks? Thanks

 

That’s a big stretch! I would make sure the end of the sway bar has no sharp edges, lube it up and send it home

 

In the past, I, have split the bushing since it is completely encased when installed.

 

Maybe soak it in hot water to get it as soft as possible before you force it over the end of the sway bar.

What size sway bar is that? The hole in the rubber bushing looks smaller than the diameter of the bar.

 

Same here... no problems at all over the past several years.

 

I tried soaking mine in hot water, lubed them up... wound up slicing them. I eventually went to a bigger bar anyway.

 

I tried posting them on, I suppose slicing them up is how I’ll proceed

 

I replaced the rubber ones with these. https://www.energysuspensionparts.com/universal-sway-bar-bushings.asp And these had them installed in about a half hour. https://www.energysuspensionparts.com/universal-sway-bar-end-links.asp Most of the rubber these days is offshore junk and will degrade in about a year, these are a lot more stable.

 

So, were these split? The picture looks like they were one piece. Thanks

 

On the subject of the modern ****py reproduction parts, my very well preserved '54 Mainline Tudor still has all of its original rubber parts i.e. weatherstrips, window rubber, etc. and the 70 year old rubber is still as supple as the day it was made. I had to use some Carpenter and Steele rubber on my other '54 restorations and it was cracking in a year or less. Especially bad are the taillight rubbers and the heater/fresh air vent rubbers under the hood. I decided to replace the latter with sections cut from large size Harley Davidson motorcycle tubes and those have held up for years.

 

Great idea!!

 

I worked in a Ford dealer in So Cal through the 70's doing mostly front end and brakes. Upper control arm bushings on a 70 Galaxie for instance would be cracked and falling out in two to three years. Same with idler arm bushings and some of the window gaskets, Ford told us it was due to the smog, ozone, and heat from So Cal. Moog bushings seemed to be longer lasting than factory at that time but were high quality USA made. Now I hear they are not. They did seem to figure out how to improve the rubber in the oem vehicles now but aftermarket is really a **** shoot, ESPECIALLY if it comes from India! Rubber sheet from there is very cheap and gets sent around the globe to get gaskets and seals cut out of it. Just my opinion. Mark

 

I bought some Moog front suspension rebuild parts for my Lincoln MKVIII and yes, they were no longer USA made.

 

I spent the last 30 years before I retired working at Chrysler here in the Pacific Northwest. I looked at 100's of 3, 4, 5 year old cars with up to 100K miles, very rare to see a rotten bushing unless that bushing happened to be a poorly engineered part that was a known problem. I do believe there is very good quality synthetic rubber materials that work very well but the aftermarket has no interest in building them for low volume cars and trucks. Rare parts used to have parts built to their specifications but don't know if that's true anymore. I have used their ball joints and tie rods with good results in the last 10 years but not since Covid. The disruption of the supply chain wiped out many good companies and suppliers of raw materials. Not bushings but just one example is Flat Tappet lifters, BIG **** shoot to get good parts.

 

I won’t use a flat tappet cam ever again because of just that