Front Swaybar D-Bracket Grease Fitting Mod
At first, I thought that my $25 investment in a set of Daystar
sway bar bushing kit was a steal. However, the high tech polyurethane requires
much more attention (i.e. maintenance) than the OEM rubber bushings. If
you neglect them you get this lovely SQUEEEEEK every time you hit a bump. While
taking the two shackles down and greasing them up is not difficult, it
nonetheless requires a crawl under the truck plus those damn bolts are right
next to the catalytic converters. If possible, it would be nice to reduce or
eliminate this chore.
So I was looking for a way to retain the use of the bushings and their beneficial properties while not having to break them down every couple of weeks
So here is what I came up with, why can't they have a grease fitting?? Grease-able bushings are nothing new, but simply not offered for the TUNDRA. The brackets are placed very favorably for access from the bottom. Also, even with my heavy duty after-market skid plate this access is maintained. So off to the local auto parts store I went with a plan in mind.
At the auto parts store I dropped about $5 for a set of press-able grease fittings. Here is what I did:
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Only tools required: Drill (a press is best, if you use a hand drill I would
drill the hole thru the bracket from the underside first, then fit the bushing
and the drill the bushing using freshly drilled hole as a guide), 3/16" steel
bit, a vise, and Man's best friend, a Dremel tool to make some grooves! After
the fitting, I may have to add more grooves to increase the area that the grease
distributes to or add an additional zerk. Also remember he 27 ft.lb spec is for
both bolts on the D bushing bracket and the 14 ft.lb spec for the bolt that
holds the stabilizer bar end bushings in place.
All-in-all a helpful and easy mod, but I will still need to crawl under to do the greasing.
Post Mod Note: The grooves you cut need to be big enough to allow some grease to snake its way in. The trick was finding the correct balance so that the bushing did not loose its capability. This mod helped some, but I never got it squeak-free, probably because my grooves were ill designed. I also managed to rip out a zerk with the grease gun- a smaller pilot hole might have helped. I never got around to doing a 2nd zerk.
Ultimately, I lost one of these brackets on the
John Bull Trail when the pressed in bolt snapped. To finish the run, I just
tore down the entire front swaybar. Without it, she surprisingly still had
decent manners on the road and I ran it that way for almost 8 months.