I need body mount bushings for an 87-96 I tried the hard poly plastic ones but they are so stiff they suck. Factory rubber ones are not sold anywhere...what choice do I have? Have them custom made? Can anything else be trimmed to fit??

 

^ I'm going to need this info soon, replacing mine too during my engine swap.

 

Get the part number for the bushings then look it up on moparpartz.com. I thought I was able to get a price from there and that usually means they have them.

 

i used bushings from some random frame i found at the junkyard. a little bigger but worked like a charm

 

I will have to see if there is even a part number left on one lol

Has anyone ever seen a stabilizer bar in the bed of a truck? Granted it does not connect directly to the frame or shocks it would still stabilize the bed from flex wouldn't it? This is after front and rear anti-sway bars are installed:

 

Either go to your local dodge dealer and get them to look up the part number, or use the parts manual in the faq.

Also unsure what tieing the wheel arches together will do. I wouldn't bother with it I can't see it helping.

 

from a physics standpoint it should help decrease body-roll, but I dont really see it making a very noticeable difference

 

Sorry, yes I realize what a strut brace is for, but I'm not sure how much it will help on a truck.

Typically strut bars are attached to the two strut towers of a vehicle. The upper strut mount is high up on the sheet metal of the vehicle, which can introduce some flex, as a Unibody vehicle uses the body in place of a dedicated frame, and is where it developes its rigidity. By tying the top of the strut towers together, you make the body more rigid, and improve the handling of the vehicle (since the body IS the frame, essentially).

Now a truck is a completely different animal. Firstly it doesn't use struts, and the second and most importantly is it uses a frame as the main structure. It is the frame/crossmembers that dictate the rigidity of the vehicle. Yes, bolting a bed and cab onto a frame will help increase rigidity, but that is not their main purposes. The mounts that go between the bed/cab and the frame are rubber and are designed to absorb vibration/movement, that means any additional rigidity in the bed is most likely lost in the mounts themselves being flexible.

I would guess that if you make the bed more rigid, it will mostly just cause more movement at the rubber bed mounts, instead of causing the frame to be more rigid, as the rubber mounts are the weak point in this equation. Now if you had a rigid bed to frame connection, or used poly mounts (which you don't like), it may be able to make more of a difference, but there would have to be minimal movement between the bed and the frame.

Keep in mind we are talking about Trucks that are in some cases a quarter of a century old. They aren't going to handle like a go kart. If you can fabricate a sway bar onto the rear end (not sure if these trucks ever came with a rear sway bar?) you will probably notice a larger difference, than making the bed more rigid.

 

Thats a really well put point. Personally, I've learned how to roll the wiight and body-roll through the turns to work with how I drive, use the totally shot suspension to my advantage lol.

 

I was told they came with both front and rear anti-sways, mine has neither! I guess it was a tow package thing but mine was a very basic model I'm working on obtaining front and rears asap.

Same here haha, I learnt how to drive with four blown shocks for a year and a half...then when I installed four new shocks I was a champ lol



For the soft car like ride I want I'm being told soft springs are the way to go with GOOD/expensive shocks, not sure what else to do besides having custom soft coils and leaf stacks made up.