Litch wrote:

"In my experience the 'de carbon gas type' shock are crap and break just like yours have. Even when fitted correctly. "

Everyone has different experiences, I had my DC gas shocks for 8-years and they were still working perfectly when I removed them and sold on for further use.

Retroanaconda wrote:

The reason I was wondering was because one of the rear bushes on mine went like this when I first tightened it up to the specified torque and drove it for a while.


Click image to enlarge

Undone it and re-tightened, anyway I'm sure it'll be fine. Shocks seem to be good, though a little harsh perhaps. That may be because I've set them on too high a setting (2).

NickH wrote:

I have seen this before several times.
Firstly polybushes of any grade are not very good for land rovers. Yes the handling is transformed when the polybushes are fitted, its going to be, because you are replacing a squashy rubber bush along with its cushioning effect with a plastic bush that has no give whatsoever. Those loads that would have been absorbed by the rubber have to go somewhere.
What happens is any bolts securing the suspension components are subject to far more harsh loads so they wear themselves and the the holes they go into. Radius arms with poly bushes require tightening regularly until you get to a point where you have to replace the bolt and polybush. When you remove the bolt its holes are always worn oval. The same applies to the shockers, check the hole in the axle which the shocker goes through, I bet its worn far bigger than it should be.
Another factor is the shocks themselves, there are many better than what land rover fit but a lot of these shocks have a thinner threaded rod than standard LR ones, I dont know why this is but coupled with polybushes the shocker rod gets a ring worn in it were it goes through the axle making it thin enough to snap off !

Retroanaconda wrote:

It's a Rover axle. Yep the flat washers are fitted against the axle bracket.

A while back I found a website selling spare bush sets:

http://www.larkspeed.com/index.pl?c=KONISPARES&s=category

custom90steve wrote:

Pickles - The red are the hardest grade, I have them on mine.
I cannot see any real argument for or against either type, both fail, both fail at varying mileage.
Yes, Polybushes are stiffer and genuine softer, with genuine not transmitting vibration so much to other components.
However, genuine don't last long and wear fairly quick and degrade with common antitrust treatments.
Rust plays a part in wear also and shocks are not something that you can change every five minutes without binning the shocks sooner or later.
On the shocks I previously had which were genuine with genuine bushes, the shocks were absolutely fine, but the bushes shot.
This in turn mean it was so loose the bolt through the middle could move around a lot, again causing excessive wear on a big scale.
Obviously I sorted this quick, but the shocks were seized especially the fronts and the only way to remove was to cut off.
So I had to get rid of perfectly good shocks thanks to genuine bushes being knackered at about 38k.