x5 ball joint and bushing review

[foolio2k4]

So I installed the x5 ball joint and the steeda black (hardest) bushing.

All I can say........Whats the diff?

In terms of feel? Dont feel much difference. Yeah, maybe turn-in feels slightly better but not something thats night and day.

Bushings feel the same way. But on the hardest for the front and MAYBE the steering feels slightly stiffer. But again, not night and day.

For all the money I went through, I dun think it was worth it. More test drive and opinions to follow shortly.

 

[Liftedbronco]

the ball joints raise the spindle and allow us to get the negative camber that we desire in lowered cars. otherwise you would feel nothing.

The bushings - I guess thats a testament to those hydrabushings. But i cant help but think that in a race situation on race tires they would deflect less. That would maintain your alignment settings and geometry better. Thats good that you dont feel too much on the street. you dont want it to feel different.

Thanks for the review! I was always looking at these.

 

[DusterRT]

the ball joints raise the spindle and allow us to get the negative camber that we desire in lowered cars. otherwise you would feel nothing.

Not quite..they lower the knuckle end of the control arm; geometry wise it is like un-lowering your car ~.6" or however much longer they are. This raises your roll center a bit. I would not expect much of a seat of the pants improvement. In theory it will also increase your camber gain (again this depends on where you're at to begin with), but not enough that I would expect to feel any dramatic improvement.

The bushings - I guess thats a testament to those hydrabushings. But i cant help but think that in a race situation on race tires they would deflect less. That would maintain your alignment settings and geometry better. Thats good that you dont feel too much on the street. you dont want it to feel different.

IMO, the Steeda bushing is kind of a band-aid approach to addressing that big bushing. User friendly (removing that sucker is not fun, I am told) and should help some, but you'll notice the real race cars use a delrin bushing there. There's a company that sells a poly bushing replacement for it on ebay that would probably be more effective than the insert and more street friendly than solid bushings; I think "RUK" is the brand, and no, I've never heard of them either. White makes something similar, I think they call it an anti-dive kit. If I'm not mistaken, Steve Poe has used these at least once on his race cars if you want to ping him for some first hand input..

Disclaimer: I have used none of these products, nor do I plan to. I'm convinced I can come up with a better solution myself once I get a lathe in my shop.

 

[RolloTomassi]

I would have to agree, the X-5 balljoint was probably more headache to install than it was worth performance-wise.

I only changed mine out because I had split the rubber shroud on the stock balljoints during a trackday. If they weren't oozing lube I'd just leave um alone.

That being said, turn-in is noticably better. But not worth taking the control arm off, pressing out the old balljoint, pressing in the new one and putting it all back together...

One thing I have noticed since the install is more vibration/feedback coming through the steering wheel under hard deceleration. Anyone else find this to be the case?

 

[Liftedbronco]

yea i wasnt even going to get into roll center but raising it is definitley a good thing for "feel" imo. Plus if it helps your control arm be closer to parallel to the ground at right height, that helps with feel too. The arms in my 944 are like this right now \___/ not good, but bumpsteer kits are hard to come by for that car and id need one if i moved the pivot points of the control arms up.

 

[mykim72]

delrin bushings are the bees nees...lubricating bushings is so 90s...

 

[foolio2k4]

Yeah another thing i notice when i drive. Probably because of the raised roll center, I get more body roll up in the front. Is this something that would occur with the raised roll center. I maybe lower my car another half inch or so.

 

[DusterRT]

Yeah another thing i notice when i drive. Probably because of the raised roll center, I get more body roll up in the front. Is this something that would occur with the raised roll center. I maybe lower my car another half inch or so.

You should have less roll with the higher roll center..but again anything you notice should be pretty subtle, if anything at all.

 

[Kaldar142]

When i put my X5 balljoints in, i also put in the BMR K-member / A-arms. The car felt tighter and smoother upfront, it complimented the rest of my suspension upgrades quite well... at the same time though, i couldn't really feel THAT much of a difference though. Its been so long i can't even remember actually

 

[DusterRT]

When i put my X5 balljoints in, i also put in the BMR K-member / A-arms. The car felt tighter and smoother upfront, it complimented the rest of my suspension upgrades quite well... at the same time though, i couldn't really feel THAT much of a difference though. Its been so long i can't even remember actually

I'd bet most of what you felt was from ditching the OEM bushings for the poly or rod ends...by the way, which did you go with, and did you pick up a lot of NVH?

 

[Kaldar142]

I went with the poly on the a-arms, and no i don't think so but keep in my mind my cars NVH factor was already way up there as i already had the solid motor mounts and torque limiters combined with full rod end suspension

 

[foolio2k4]

the steeda bushings themselves dont have much NVH like it says.

 

[Rubrignitz]

Well, at least you can rest easy knowing the X5's are much more durable then the stock pieces. The reason I swapped them into my car were two-fold. Raise the roll center back to near stock and the durability factor after hearing stories of stock balljoints failing at 20k miles.

 

[Thevesh]

After installment of X5 ball joint I did not feel any change .