Seriously dangerous front bushings!!! - Page 2

crhemi · 03-31-2008, 04:08 PM

How about a price for replacements?

**batwood** · 03-31-2008, 11:22 PM

If anyone has questions on pricing or the location of the nearest Pedders dealer, the information can all be found at

Pedders Suspension

There is also some more pictures of the torn bushes. I have personally been involved with 11 installations and have seen 8 out of the 11 that have shown some sign of tearing. The ones that DMS has shown are the worst that I have seen though and comes from a car aggressively driven. However the facts remain that unless you baby the car of which most people do not you subject these parts of the suspension to increased load. Tearing is the end result.
When you put your Hotchkis bars with KW's on your car do you do this to drive it slowly or do you do this to allow you to take corners more aggressively? We are trying to use scare tactics. We originally saw a need for suspension improvements in the LX Platform and throughout the installs that we have been doing we have noticed these conditions and are communicating them to all of you. My guess is that nobody has brought it up before because they did not look there, we did and found something.

**dms** · 04-01-2008, 01:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GoofyTimL

Pedders is a supporting vendor of 3CF (and other forums). However, it would seem appropriate for them to register dms as a spokesperson and add Supporting Vendor to his username/avatar to curtail questions about "promoting wares."

i aggree. I am the Pedders west coast guy and do represent Pedders. I would welcome admin to put the ID on my avatar

mike
dms

GROUNDED · 04-01-2008, 10:38 AM

pedders peddlers lol.

OoTLink · 04-07-2008, 04:57 AM

I should go to fairfield and check this dude out haha.

**JusticePete** · 04-14-2008, 04:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cibalo

What kind of mileage are we talking about? if it is less than 36000 then it should fall under the factory warranty provided that the 3 years isn't up. I know it depends on how hard a person drives but is there a general rule of thumb?

Also where did these inspections take place? I'm wondering if weather is a factor in the wear issues. What was the break down of the LXs you inspected, 300, Maggies, Chargers? What trim level were they as well?

If this is such a big deal, has there been a TSB issued on it, I don't recall hearing about one but then I don't keep up with them that much. And should someone bring this up to DCX?

I would not have used the exact words Mike did, but his conclusions are accurate. We have seen these bush failures in the across North America. If you visit the the Pedders USA LX page you can see how we frame this issue. It is not a warranty issue. The bushes in your LX will last a long time is driven the way the car and bushes were designed to be driven. If you drive your car the way I drive mine -- you'll have bush issues. They will not be warranty. They will be owner abuse. The common denominator in LX bush failure is aggressive driving. It is not a function of model. It is a function of use.

Cibalo · 04-14-2008, 07:56 PM

Well wasn't my SRT designed to be driven aggressively? I can see that with other models but seems like you could get some warranty work on bushings for the SRT.

On another note it would be good for Pedders to have a data base to better quantify these failures so LX owners can be aware of what if any damage might occur. I know you are going to say that it's hard because you don't know exactly how the car has been driven but things like year, model, trim level, mileage, list of performance mods, type of wheel and tire combo, owner location, miles driven per week, and owner stated type of driving would be a good start.

Scare tactics may be what works best and sells the most products for you but I'd like to think the people one this forum are a little more savvy.

**JusticePete** · 04-14-2008, 08:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cibalo

Well wasn't my SRT designed to be driven aggressively? I can see that with other models but seems like you could get some warranty work on bushings for the SRT.

On another note it would be good for Pedders to have a data base to better quantify these failures so LX owners can be aware of what if any damage might occur. I know you are going to say that it's hard because you don't know exactly how the car has been driven but things like year, model, trim level, mileage, list of performance mods, type of wheel and tire combo, owner location, miles driven per week, and owner stated type of driving would be a good start.

Scare tactics may be what works best and sells the most products for you but I'd like to think the people one this forum are a little more savvy.

The assumption here is an incorrect one. When I decided to put the LX platform into our R & D development que I knew it would be a different car with refinements to the bushes, coils and damping rates. We were in no way expecting to find ripped and torn bushes on vehicles that had been driven aggressively. Mike White is an auto industry veteran. He started his career as a lowly shop tech and worked his way up to become an ASE Master and over the years to hold virtually every position in service and fixed operations. His post here was made out of genuine concern. If you knew Mike personally you would never doubt that.

Mike conducted a Pedders Day at Fairfield Chevrolet Cadillac Pedders in the bay area. Those that attended participated in Pedders 28 Point Inspections. They found LXs with perfect bushes and LXs with bushes that looked like the pictures. There is no better way to demonstrate this than to see it for yourself. With a group of LXs on lifts you can literally see the difference. I can do a 28 Point Inspection on your LX and tell you exactly how you drive. The tells are there is one knows where to look.

I posted in this thread becuase it has not been accepted as it had been offered. When we did Meisters LX we planned to do his rear sub-frame bushes. We did his front end becuase it was destroyed. Another record run on the 1/4 mile could have ended with a very bad result. His radius rod front bush had literally ripped 360 degrees -- it was failed. Jim paid for his bits. Jim has a budget as we all do. We used what was set aside in his budget for a suspension mod to make his vehcile safe and the rear which we think will get him one or two 10ths had too wait. Mike and Jim have much in common. Mike has scheduled his titanium hearing stud implant for June. Jim and Mike compared notes on this procedure. They formed a bond in the shop. Mike left the shop with thinking about Jim and the torn bushes and wrote an honest but emotional post.

At Pedders we live our work and love our work. We are very passionate about our customers and products. Come to the next Pedders Day and you'll be able to test drive a Pedderised LX, get a 28 Point Inspection at NO CHARGE (though we do take donations that are forwarded 100% to Saint Jude's Children's Hospital and Make a Wish), meet your local Dealer and people from Pedders Head Office. The best Pedders prospective customer is an educated and informed skeptic. The proof is not in the charts or posts. The proof is in what you see and experience in the shop and on the road.

None of this changes the original intent of Mike's first post. Get your front end carefully inspected. You can replace worn, torn or otherwise damaged bushes with OE or Pedders bits. Have them replaced under warranty. Replace them yourself. No matter how you do it don't drive a car at high speeds or on the track with bad bushes. We don't care how you do it or if you buy from Pedders. We do care that you do it. Not doing it can be seriously dangerous.

Cibalo · 04-14-2008, 09:56 PM

thanks for explaining Pete. I think that makes alot more sense than dms's first post which seemed to just try and scare people into buying product. I don't doubt that you are seeing these problems and feel that it is a serious concern and I commend you on getting the word out to as many people as possible. I have been wanting more information on what actually causes the failure to occur and not just hearing "because of aggressive driving" but it may be that at this time you are unable to say for sure. That is more of the problem solver in me wanting to better understand the problem and what is happening at the bushings themselves.

**JusticePete** · 04-14-2008, 11:25 PM

The causes are straightforward

1. Mass -- It is a large vehicle
2. RWHP -- it starts out strong and gets stronger with just an adjustment to the torque management / traction control ECM
3. BHP -- Stickier tires, higher friction pads, big brake kits and the OE Brembo brakes -- Those are Bad A$$ brakes

Take a good look at the radius rod bush. It is a steel-jacketed hockey puck size piece of rubber with shape / voids. It is compliant. It was designed to allow the suspension to articulate, control the vehicle and meet Noise, Vibration and Harmonic (NVH)standards. It was also designed to meet a price point with the market place. If you closely examine a gently driven bush you will find 'smile' lines have formed during use. These lines are nothing more than the area where the rubber surface has reacted with air, dried a bit and then in this innocuously dried superficial layer the rubber has 'cracked'. This is absolutely normal and what would be expected. This is not a problem. When you look more closely at these pictures yo will see how it has progressed.

So what causes this progression -- increased load. Matt ran his car at the track early last week. He has been modding his car for some time. With all of his mods plus Pedders Track II bush kit he was having braking issues. His fluid was boiling and his rotors were glowing. He never had that issue before, but with more speed from the other mods his brakes got comparatively weaker. He increased the load. The brakes began to fail.

I have seen one box stock SRT 8 with torn bushes, but the driver is an animal. The SRT 8 is an excellent car out of the box. There is no doubt in my mind that were I a Chrysler Dealer or Corporate employee I would have denied that as a warranty claim. His tires showed track mark into the lettering on the sidewall -- just like some of mine. I know how hard he has tracked that car. The loads were very very high. That said so is a BMW. BMWs have bush issues for the same reasons the LXs do. Pedders bits would almost never fit into an OEM budget for a production car. I have Dealers with varied interests and services. Pedders has a bush kit for the Superformance Cobra based on a Dealer request. We had existing bits that we felt met the engineering needs for sway bar D bushes and endlink bushes. Other requests for urethane Ferrari bushes don't make the Pedders R & D que -- the market is jut too small. Could Chrysler make a Pedders style voided urethane bush -- sure if they had the commitment from sales to preach the benefits and the will to put an MSRP on the car at over $50,000.

If you search through the LX forums you will also find failures in the rubber strut and shock mounts. Some are from high mileage while others appear to be induced by coilover increased loads. Regardless they are failing. We think that there is a noise element in these mounts. We are looking at a redesign of this OE LX bit. It will probably be a rubber bit as urethane does not bond to our standard for the torsional loads required in this bit. We are collecting failed LX OE rubber strut and shock mounts. We don't see this as a defective OE bit. We see this as an opportunity to serve a market need. Most LX owners will not need an upgraded new and improved strut or shock mount. Because the LX market is so big there is a business case to develop the bit for the most demanding LX owners. As we continue to collect these bits from embers of various LX forums we may find that there is no better solution than the current bit available from Chrysler. If that is the case we will not make them.

Once again, we designed this kit to improve the stability of the platform. It was our opinion that the bushes could be made using our voided urethane design to maintain the civility of the vehicle yet provide a dramatic increase in the handling. In our R & D phase we did not see these bush failures. We designed this kit for the enthusiast driver and for the discerning daily driver. The bush failures were news to us too. We expected OEM bush mush -- lots of compliance and noise isolation. The bush tears got our attention.