Synergy Bushing Thread

[Crawl2Camp]

I saw there was a bit of talk on Greers Bender build thread, and wanted to share my firsthand experience without mucking up his thread. So here goes…

Sometime around 2018 they (Synergy) decided to substitute a completely different bushing design which was sub standard to the original dual durometer bushing into their products.  I had a good percentage of this bushing type in my set of Synergy arms fail at extremely low miles of usage and was very unhappy.  Synergy’s customer service was beyond atrocious and in the end (Thank goodness for Northridge 4x4’s excellent customer service & owner who I got involved and worked with) I was able to get all my money back for the complete arm set.  Synergy has since switched back to the original dual durometer designed bushings which are actually quite decent.  Below you can see the true dual durometer bushing (lower) vs the substitute that would fail (top).  The substitute is missing the teflon liner and more importantly the “internal bushing ring”. Both the steel and nylon center can slide completely out of the rest of the soft bushing on the substituted bushing as the bonding would fail as seen. This results in only the flexible rubber trying to hold the arm from side to side movement and lots of slop in the bushing.

After the Synergy arm nightmare I switched to Metalcloak arms and coils.  (I previously was running Rock Krawler coils that had sagged severely)   I have had one Metalcloak bushing failure in a front lower arm, but that was resolved in quick fashion with a free replacement.
Take it for what you want. 

[fiend]

Interesting. Thanks for posting.  Since synergy isn’t a sponsor here, there’s no sensitivity about posting “negative” but true information, unlike at some other forums.  
 

I started with the old old style synergy arms, with clevite bushings. Those lasted a long time, maybe 6-7 years.  When they finally wore out I replaced them all with Synergy’s “dual durometer” bushings. Getting the clevites out was a huge PITA.  It wasn’t as simple as pressing them out.  I was a little skeptical of the dual durometer ones, but have generally had good results from synergy stuff so I was willing to try them out.  They’ve been in for maybe a couple of years now.  Maybe one of mine was from the bad batch/design you described.  Anyway, it clearly failed.  I didn’t see that with any of the others.  It’s only $25 to replace the one, so hopefully that will take care of it for a while.
 

For the axle swap I ended up replacing the front lower arms with a Barnes DIY kit that has their “enduro” joints, which are a Johnny joint knockoff.  The only synergy dual durometer joints left on my Jeep are the rear lower arms, and possibly the frame side joints of the front upper control arms (I can’t remember).

[Jdofmemi]

Good info on bushings. 

 

For what it's worth, within one year, EVERY EVO bushing on Vengeance is completely shot. 

 

After White Jeep is up running it is getting all new links and mounts. 

Probably will go with heim joints. 

[fiend]

So I went back and took at look at the front lower arms that I swapped out.  Sure enough, at least two of the dual durometer bushings are blown out.  Delamination, as Kevin described.  Not good.  I'll get a little more life out of my lower rear arms and then get rid of them when the bushings start failing.

[fiend]

15 hours ago, Jdofmemi said:

Good info on bushings. 

 

For what it's worth, within one year, EVERY EVO bushing on Vengeance is completely shot. 

 

After White Jeep is up running it is getting all new links and mounts. 

Probably will go with heim joints. 

What's the construction of the EVO joints?  I thought they used johnny joints?

[Jdofmemi]

Alan can elaborate, but he found that EVO uses cheaper, lower quality internals on the Johnny joints they sell. 

 

 

[fiend]

28 minutes ago, Jdofmemi said:

Alan can elaborate, but he found that EVO uses cheaper, lower quality internals on the Johnny joints they sell. 

 

 

Jeez. Can’t we have nice things?

[AJK]

A rep at offroad warehouse told me that they buy the external part from Currie but the internal are not from Currie.

 

When I was at Currie a few weeks ago I asked them this question and he got a confused look on his face and said I don't believe that to be true.

[fiend]

On 5/23/2022 at 9:13 PM, Jdofmemi said:

Good info on bushings. 

 

For what it's worth, within one year, EVERY EVO bushing on Vengeance is completely shot. 

 

After White Jeep is up running it is getting all new links and mounts. 

Probably will go with heim joints. 

What kind of heims?  The "good" ones (TMR, Summit, Ballistic) sure are spendy.