Icon Suspension Squeaking Fix

I have had my Icon stage 3 kit for 7-8 years now and in the past year had been dealing with a horrible squeaking. I was able to silence the squeaking once and for all today. I found out a few useful pieces of information along the way that I hadn't seen on here yet and I'd like to share with you guys:

1) Even though it sounds exactly like poly bushing squeak, don't rule out your other joints. You have an upper and lower heim joint on your Icon shock assembly as well as a seal where the piston meets the shock body.

2) Dry graphite lube spray. I bought a can of Mac's dry graphite lube in a spray can with a straw at my local NAPA and hit the before mentioned joints to silence the suspension.

3) Icon has a unique bushing design which incorporates what Adrian from Icon described in another thread as an "anti deflection ring" which is the plastic washer in-between your bushing halves. This was actually digging into the control arm even with plenty of grease, and also sticking to the inner metal sleeve no matter what I tried. He also reported that it was necessary to use the washer, however it makes no sense to me because the grease zerk is located right over that piece and it would keep the grease from reaching the inner sleeve in theory. Considering no other company uses those stupid plastic washers, I removed mine for now as it obviously was causing damage to the metal in the UCA pivot area and I'm sure that correlates to noise. I do not know the safety aspect of this, so I am not recommending others to do it, however this may open a further discussion into the topic.

This is the UCA bushing cup. I always greased the bushings to their directions every 5k miles. The groove is deep enough to catch with my finger:


And this is the hardware I removed:


The sleeve began its life with a gold coating, and you can see where the plastic ring was stuck to it. 3 of my 4 bushing locations were in this condition. I believe this component has something to do with the bushings squeaking, if not clearly causing damage to the control arm, at least in my case.

Furthermore, and finally, my next attempt to silence the control arms was to purchase the JBA EZ-Lube bushings which have a solid design, however unfortunately I can confirm they do not fit my Icon tubular UCA. The bushings are about 3/8 to 1/2" too large in diameter, a little bit thicker from end to end, and come with a sleeve that is also slightly longer. The sleeve is, however, the same diameter. The part number from JBA was "TC-69000 UCA Bushing Kit" for anyone who was thinking of doing the same.

Finally, it looks like the new Icon bushings I had gotten to replace my old ones were rather loose in the control arm. So loose that they would fall out of the arm while assembling back together. The powder coat in the cups is intact other than in the very middle where that plastic ring was, therefore I can't imagine why this is. There's no actual play, just not a press-fit. Everywhere I have read says that the bushings should be a tight fit so as to encourage the pivoting to happen on the metal sleeve on the inside of the bushings. This is why most manufacturers leave the outer surface of the bushings flat and leave grease grooves on the inside. They also don't include a plastic ring directly on top of the grease zerk - an Icon original. These are just some of the things Icon is doing different than other companies, right wrong or indifferent.

At any rate, whatever I have done seems to have worked for now. Hope this helps somebody or at least sparks some conversation for future knowledge.

 

Any update on how they’re doing since removing the plastic washer?
Just curious as I’m tired of greasing my squeaky bushings lol.

 

I have since gotten rid of the truck. In my case I think the squeaking was more related to the shock shaft seal. I never put the rings back on and never noticed any issues. I'd spray dry lube where the shaft goes into the shock and in the heims just to make sure it's actually the bushings first. I got tired of the constant maintenance that was being required on the suspension.

 

I agree, I’m tired of the maintenance on my Icon suspension too. Apparently DirtKing is coming out with a greaseless bushings UCAs soon so that might be my next option.