Text by Luca Lorenzato, Ferrari Master Technician
The “fun to drive” feeling our beloved cars transmit to us is priceless, but with the time this is slowly changing even if imperceptibly. And now, after many summers when driving your car, you fell the chassis rolling more in the corner or while braking hard the steering wheel tempt to turn alone, or again while accelerating you feel the car moving “the back”… Why?
The technical word is degradation.
The rubber is one of the key components of the suspension group. Except few models who are endowed of uniball, most of the old and new cars produced use rubber for the A-arm bushings, and this material is prone to deterioration. With the age is losing the elastic property and when stressed it cracks, and this means a softer or even a loose suspension group.
The solution to this problem is to replace the bushing with a new set. This will give new verve to the car restoring the handling as new or even better because we must consider the improvement of the materials (rubber compounds) through the years…
But the job doesn’t stop with replacing the bushings, we must be sure also to reassembling the arms in the right way, not rocket science, but some small tricks are needed. Like tightening all the bolts related to the suspensions when the car is at correct ride-height, this for example will prevent stress at the bushings material (rubber) when the suspensions are at the neutral height.
All these plus a professional check and adjustment of the car suspensions geometry will finally give us back the real “ fun to drive” feeling!