Car bushings are located virtually everywhere under a modern car, with upper control arm bushes, shock absorber bushes, rear and front lower control arm bushes, steering arm bushes, sway bar bushes and more, all keeping you isolated from the violence involved in hitting a pothole at 100km/h.

Bushing vs bearing

At that point, you need to replace the bushings. You can buy a whole set of bushings as a kit, or individually if only some are worn. Replacing them is a fairly involved job and usually involves a hydraulic press, including removing the old bushings, so it’s not really a job for the driveway on a Saturday morning. The replacement cost complete kit of bushings for the average car will range in price, but a good ball-park figure is around the $500 mark. You can then add at least the same amount in labour. Some polymer bushing kits are more expensive, but while it’s not a cheap fix, replacing worn bushings will transform the way the car drives. Not to mention making it safe again.

Those pivots obviously need to be strong, so they’re made from metal. The problem then is that those pivot points involve movement between the two suspension or steering parts that form the pivot and that would involve metal-on-metal movement. And that would make things wear out very quickly. It would also contribute to noise and the car would be very uncomfortable without some `give’ in those joints.

Whatis bushing in a car

Enter the bushing. The bushing is more or less a layer of rubber or polymer that keeps the two metal surfaces slightly apart, reducing noise as the movement occurs, but also reducing wear and allowing a little compression to reduce the shock being transferred into the cabin. Think of the bushing as the cartilage in your knee joint, giving the bones full, smooth movement without them grinding on each other.

So, you’ve just been to the mechanic to have your car serviced and the mechanic tells you your car needs new suspension bushings. But what are bushings on a car? How do they go wrong, and what do they do in the first place?

A bushing is part of the suspension and steering systems and is located where the suspension pivots. A car has lots of pivot points in its steering and suspension. Think about how the front wheels go up and down over bumps as well as swivel when you turn the steering wheel. All those movements require pivot points.

What are bushingsused for

Car-makers generally use rubber for their bushing material, while the aftermarket can also supply replacement bushes in a range of plastic or polymer materials. These latter types are a bit stiffer than the rubber bushings so they control the suspension and steering a little more accurately at the expense of a little more harshness reaching the cabin. The polymer bushes are also more impervious to oil (of which there can be quite a lot of under a car).

Suspension bushes are a wearing part, so eventually, they develop slack or slop and don’t hold the pivots together as tightly as they should. Symptoms of this include a loose feeling through the car, vague steering and noise from the suspension. Fundamentally, with worn bushes car control is reduced. Once the bushings are really worn, the car will not handle or steer properly and will be unroadworthy. You might even find that worn bushings can create uneven tyre wear.

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