I've just started upgrading my suspension and I want to know if there's a problem with mixing poly bushings with the stock ones. I've read many posts but never found a clear answer. I plan to replace the sway bar bushings and endlinks first and don't see a problem with using poly there but I'm worried about changing the torque arm bushing to poly without changing the trany and motor mounts. Will that cause the mounts to bind and/or break? And can I even buy a rubber torque arm mount? My car is just a weekend cruiser that I occasionaly drive hard so I don't think I need or want a full set of poly bushings nor do I want to chase squeaks. Any advice is appreciated.

 

That won't cause any trouble at all. After all, you don't see warnings on the box for a poly torque arm mount that says "Must replace every other bushing in the car with poly if you want to use this" do you?

 

True, I'm just skeptical since it connects directly to the trany, and it to the motor, etc. I think one bushing company suggested changing every bushing at once so they would 'give' the same way and not bind. I just dont wanna cause more problems than I fix.

 

Personally, I'm staying away from poly on the trans and engine mounts. My friend's car has them, and they transmit much more vibration and noise than do the rubbers. Not something I like for my car. And I'm not sure of any advantages they offer over rubber in these locations in a cruiser/daily driver.

 

I did poly for my transmission, but I plan on doing rubber for my engine mounts.

 

I replaced everything with poly--the single place that caused a problem that I couldn't live with (and not everyone will have this set-up) was the secondary cross member. At higher RPM's the sound/vibration was nasty. I replaced the secondary cross member poly mounts with OE rubber, but left the trans mount. All's good.

BTW, just for general comparison, my new unmodified Altima 3.5 SE coupe rides as hard as my IROC.

JamesC

 

Hmm, I use poly on engine and trans, no excessive vibes at all.. I would not mix and match poly trans mounts and engine mounts.. some folks had vibe issues with just replacing one or the other and though it can't be proven I would attribute that to putting a poly tranny mount on with bad engine mounts causing the driveline angle to change slightly.. or that the car already had an imbalance with the stock parts covered up by the rubber..

for the rest of my car it is poly or polygraphite..

 

Like JamesC, I have a poly trans mount with the OEM rubber secondary mounts on the crossmember. I also had the OEM rubber engine mounts with my V6 and will be using rubber mounts with my V8. I had no noise/vibration issues with this setup on the V6 and don't expect any with the V8.