Iv been recently toying with the idea of replacing all the bushings in the car to something stiffer, after sitting in my friends brz that has engine mount, shifter/trans, diff, steering, and others I cant remember. I loved how everything felt solid, direct, and connected to the car. But I don't know where to start, any one have some recommendations on what I should swap out and which is best for our cars?
M3 style motor and tranny mounts were my first step, and made a pretty large difference but didn't compromise comfort much. I rebuilt my shift linkage with new bushings and that made a huge difference in feel, it is much tighter now. I have run powerflex and z4-m front control arm bushings and like how they tighten up the front end, and didn't notice much more road noise. I also replaced my subframe bushings, which made a huge difference. All my cars bushings are upgraded or replaced with a bearing. It honestly just depends how much you want to spend. These cars can go from a luxury ride to race car stiffness very easily with the right parts.
M3 style motor and tranny mounts were my first step, and made a pretty large difference but didn't compromise comfort much. I rebuilt my shift linkage with new bushings and that made a huge difference in feel, it is much tighter now. I have run powerflex and z4-m front control arm bushings and like how they tighten up the front end, and didn't notice much more road noise. I also replaced my subframe bushings, which made a huge difference. All my cars bushings are upgraded or replaced with a bearing. It honestly just depends how much you want to spend. These cars can go from a luxury ride to race car stiffness very easily with the right parts.
Just how stiff do you want to go? For many of the bushings on the car there's everything from HD rubber all the way up to solid aluminum or spherical bearings (for that 'because racecar' feel).
Something I've been meaning to ask (which you'll probably benefit from as well) is what locations should we stay away from upgrading to polyurethane? FCABs are very common from what I've seen. Any non-moving parts such as motor/trans/subframe should be fine (depending on your NVH tolerance), but what are the areas where you need to have some flex? Are there any bushings besides the RTABs where we should stick with rubber (assuming we're not willing to live with the NVH of a spherical bearing)?
For stuff like steering, shifter, and anything related to suspension I want "race" but motor and tranny mount wise something under "race" would be great.
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