Can we clear up "Binding" once and for all?

[pontiacgp]

What you say Pontiacgp?

Oh yeah, you may have experience but failed to gain wisdom from it. 😛

http://turbobuick.com/threads/body-...eld-bracing-to-the-frame.357691/#post-2857022
http://turbobuick.com/threads/full-build-of-my-87-gn-the-300k-mile-tune-up.396465/#post-3220994
http://turbobuick.com/threads/my-car-does-the-hula.89989/page-2#post-674706

I have seen drag cars that have torn on that bracket from power....that is not from binding and it looks more like that beak is from rust

 

[UMI Sales]

For street applications that ride quality is desired, choose polyurethane. We have literally thousands of customers that will attest to this being the right decision with both A and G Body cars.

If your building a track car thats a whole different conversation.

Craig

 

[UNGN]

Predictability is why you can take a corner fast. You know you can go into a corner at X speed and make the corner.

The G-body suspension is totally predictable right up to the limits, then the bind makes it potentially unpredictable, so there is value removing this unpredictability at the limits.

If you don't have sticky tires and don't have negative camber up front, it may be hard to get into the unpredictable regime of the rear suspension. With a big front bar, no negative camber and small rear bar, you might never feel the rear suspension bind.

The "bind" means the rear suspension basically becomes solid under high G loading and won't deflect anymore, so a bump in a turn will launch the back of the car airborne. This bind puts a lot of stress on control arm mounts, but unless they are rusted they probably won't crack/break. After years of binding, maybe the non rusted metal will fatigue crack... but on street car, you'll generally spin it out an wreck it long before the binding cracks the mounts.

 

[Clone TIE Pilot]

A quote from Global West Suspension Systems web site,

"Rear control arms are probably one of the first performance suspension components most upgrade when working on their suspension. Unfortunately this is also the first place most make a mistake and don't realize it until it's to late. Choosing the correct bushing for the application is the biggest problem. Over the years there has been a lot of hype about polyurethane bushings. Polyurethane bushings do have their place, however it depends upon what you are going to do with the car. The problem we have with polyurethane is unless you are drag racing, polyurethane binds up the rear suspension. The rearsuspension can not articulate. This creates rear suspension handling problems and causes the car to ride rough over bumps. Most people notice the ride change. It's too bad you are led to believe this is handling. What you are really feeling isn't handling, your experiencing suspension bind. While we offer polyurethane control arms also, our primary reason for using them is to be competitive in the industry. However, polyurethane bushings create a tremendous amount of bind for street and handling applications.
We will not recommend polyurethane bushed rear control arms for street or handling applications."

From Mark Savitske, owner of SC&C and author of How to Make Your Muscle Car Handle,
"The converging 4 link rear suspension on many GM cars and all Fox body Mustangs have a problem. Their geometry requires the arms to flex to avoid binding up the suspension but this same flex can also lead to wheel hop and poor handling. Until now you had two choices: Use the flexible stock arms, or use beefy steel arms with hard bushings that helped the wheel hop but caused the suspension to bind in torsion causing erratic handling. Some attempts have been made to fix this problem with heim ends or steel bearings but they can transmit a lot of road noise to the body and are open to water and road grit so they wear much faster than stock components."

 

[64nailhead]

OP - the answer to your thread title appears to be 'no' - lol 🙂.

From a sane standpoint, attempting to use a stock suspension in a competition/performance application is a problem waiting to happen IMHO. The same can be said about entire driveline. I.e. try swapping heads, cam, intake, and exhaust to spin a motor to 9000 rpm's with a stock bottom end and see what happens. The same can be said about the transmission, driveline and rear end. Speed, HP, and handling take money -they are not synonomous with the term 'stock' regarding most anything that was designed as a grocery getter.

 

[Clone TIE Pilot]

OP - the answer to your thread title appears to be 'no' - lol 🙂.

From a sane standpoint, attempting to use a stock suspension in a competition/performance application is a problem waiting to happen IMHO. The same can be said about entire driveline. I.e. try swapping heads, cam, intake, and exhaust to spin a motor to 9000 rpm's with a stock bottom end and see what happens. The same can be said about the transmission, driveline and rear end. Speed, HP, and handling take money -they are not synonomous with the term 'stock' regarding most anything that was designed as a grocery getter.

The issue here is we have a paradox in regards with the rear suspension. It just isn't a great design for performance. It is cheap and just decent for a DD, it is why the GNX completely did away with the 4 link for a different setup. These cars for the most part were never designed or intended for high performance, especially by modern standards. Stock stuff doesn't bind but it is weak for 400 hp or more. Aftermarket poly bushings and tube arms are stronger, but bind and leads to breakage and handling problems which is what they are promised to fix. 1le bushings are better than stock but Roto joints like Johnny joints solve many of the issues of both stock and aftermarket, but they do not solve everything, only a complete rear suspension redesign will do that. Each choice has pros and cons, and poly bushings have more cons than pros for any trailing arm setup.

 

[Mike buttafuoco]

This is the issue with the 4 link, the axis of each joint are not parallel or collinear with each other. If you use single axis rotation joints in this alignment then the joints will be fighting each other and cause binding at any speed. 4 links require some flex and deflection to operate properly, it isn't solely for comfort and costs, but a band aid for a cheap suspension setup. It also doesn't help that the LCA mounts on these cars are weak, and using poly bushings and box or tube arms just forces the frame and mounts to twist more. Several GNs have ripped their LCA mounts out when using poly bushings and aftermarket arms because of the extra stress they induced from binding. The squaking people complain about poly bushings is caused by binding.

The rear arms on a metric chassis do not just swivel in one direction like the fronts do. With a solid-axle, and the converging 4-link sthe bushings need to allow articulation for the axle's range of motion. Imagine looking at the upper arms through their arcs if they were only connected to the axle, and not the frame. If they only rotated on the axis of the bolt connecting them, the distance of the frame mounts would have to get wider in compression, and narrower at droop. Obviously, the frame mounts do not move, so if the bushings don't allow the angle of the arms to change, then the stress (bind) is taken up by the arm's ability to flex. If you were to replace that flimsy stamped steel arm with a rigid boxed arm, and use poly, delrin, or solid bushings, then the twisting forces would be taken up by the frame, or the axle housing. Of course, you don't want that, and those are both pretty stiff, so the result is that the axle doesn't move enough, and traction suffers.

The only other good option other than rubber in the rear are poly roto joints or metal heim joints.

Here are some good reads on binding and the problems of poly bushings.
http://www.elephantracing.com/techtopic/binding.htm
http://www.elephantracing.com/techtopic/polyurethanefriction.htm
http://www.crystalridge.net/cars/bushings.htm

Here is a quote from Global West President Doug Norrdin in Car Craft magazine:
Car Craft: What is the least understood aspect of the products your company sells?

"Doug Norrdin : People seem to think, based on the information we publish, that we are against using polyurethane bushings—especially in rear control arms for Chevelles and other A- and G-body vehicles. We’re not. We use polyurethane bushings in various applications ourselves. In fact, we build polyurethane control arms for the rear of Chevelles and other A- and G- body vehicles. It’s just that we only recommend them for straight-line applications, like drag racing. Why? Both polyurethane and our Del-a-Lum bushing will cause binding in the rear suspension if used in both ends of the control arm. Neither bushing allows the differential to articulate when the vehicle goes around corners or over bumps. The solution is to build rear tubular control arms with aircraft spherical bearings on the frame side of the control arm. The bearing provides the control needed and still allows the differential to articulate without bind."

What you say Pontiacgp?

Oh yeah, you may have experience but failed to gain wisdom from it. 😛

http://turbobuick.com/threads/body-...eld-bracing-to-the-frame.357691/#post-2857022
http://turbobuick.com/threads/full-build-of-my-87-gn-the-300k-mile-tune-up.396465/#post-3220994
http://turbobuick.com/threads/my-car-does-the-hula.89989/page-2#post-674706

Wow.

 

[pagrunt]

This makes me miss the days before the internet. Get excited to find that new hot rod part from those paper things called magazines, save the money to buy it, get it put in & show off the new stuff, break it & think it was your fault-not the fact no one advertised it was for street or competition. More fun being dumb that getting educated on why I shouldn't of bought & installed something.

 

[motorheadmike]

UMI's Roto-joints and polyurethane combo arms work great. The rearend will fully and smoothly articulate through the entire range of motion like butter.

 

[UNGN]

This makes me miss the days before the internet. Get excited to find that new hot rod part from those paper things called magazines, save the money to buy it, get it put in & show off the new stuff, break it & think it was your fault-not the fact no one advertised it was for street or competition. More fun being dumb that getting educated on why I shouldn't of bought & installed something.

We destroyed 3 "Bulletproof" Richmond 6 speeds in our 2+2 and that is TOTALLY destroyed, not counting the times its was only partially broken. There wasn't even any fine print in their magazine ads. Richmond said they were "bulletproof" with no disclaimers, and it wasn't Vinnie's Transmissions saying this, it was Richmond... After the second failure we got an engineer on the phone and learned the marketing BS was truly marketing BS. The original 6th gear was only rated @ 150 ft-lbs of torque. The "Road Race" close ratio 6th gear was only rated at 250 lb-ft. Basically, if you had a V8 and did anything more than coast in 6th gear, it was going to break.

Sure, now he tells us after 2 grenaded "bulletproof" transmissions. They gave us a new one (#3) and we babied it for a few years (running 2.50 rear gears so we never had to shift to OD) but it too eventually broke. Luckily transmission technology came a long way in the 15 years since we installed the Richmond, and T56's were now "bulletproof".

The current way of finding out things suck is much cheaper.