Check Your Radius Rod Bushes

You may have seen this before, but we lost it when we lost the old blog data… I recently found it in Googles cache, so figured it was worth reposting!

When a “new” customer brings a T3 to the workshop, the things that we can almost guarantee will need replacing are the front Radius Rod Bushes.

2 Things happen when these bushes need replacing…

The first is that the constant backwards and forwards motion of the wheel pushes the radius rod back and forth through the hole in the chassis – theres a steel sleeve around the radius rod in this area that goes through the middle of the bushes.
The sawing motion of the threaded radius rod wears away the steel sleeve. Not great, but it can be fixed cheaply and quite easily if you catch it in time. We have these sleeves manufactured in stainless steel.

The second thing that can happen is that the radius rod will cut through the sleeve, but it wont stop there… it will carry on sawing through the front cross member. At the same time wearing away the radius rod itself! The only solution then is a costly and time consuming chassis repair, followed by replacement of the Radius Rod itself…

We do have the equipment to repair this when it happens, but to be honest we’d rather its caught before it gets to this stage. The photos below are from a vehicle that was recently on the ramp. Quite a nice example of a Westfalia California…

If you have clunking and banging and generally woolly handling, theres a good chance that the radius rod bushes are to blame… check em out before they get to this stage! Your T3 will drive nicer and you’ll save yourself a big bill and some heartache in the future!

This shows the radius rod removed from the vehicle – You can see where the cross member has started to cut through the rod.

This shows the front crossmember with the outer radius rod bush removed. You can see the hole that the rod passes through is twice the size it should be. thats due to the radius rod cutting its way through the steel of the crossmember!

 

The scarey thing is that a lot of these vans have been regularly serviced, and are on most fronts well maintained. They go through MOTs and they’re driven thousands of miles…

We have all the parts to deal with this in the workshop, because we see it so often…

Radius Rod Bush Inner

Radius Rod Bush Outer

Radius Rod Bush Sleeve

Radius RodÂ