OME Dakar Front Bushings!!! (everything you need to know)

Hi all! Evan here with Marshall Fabrication.
I am making this thread for all those like me who have tried searching for something about the front bushings in the OME Dakars.
Ive had the Dakar squeaks since day one and have tried all the tricks for trying to stop it. thinking that it was the leafs them self's, like so many others have found.
But nothing worked.
So the other day I decided to take them out and replace the front bushings for Poly ones from WheelersOffroad.
And this is what I found!!!


Dry ass Bushings!! mine are actually the ones that are at the left of the photo.. the clean ones are brand new and came out of a buddies set of new Dakars. And you can see even his new Bushings are dry as hell. And again, these bushings are not "pressed" in. They pop right out. So that is another flaw, because that allows water, dirt and crud to get in there and wear out the bushings.
So I highly recommend to all that get Dakars, Before installing either swap out the front with Poly and grease them properly. Or pop out these ones and make sure they are greased.

That's my 2 cents on this, and the Dakars. Please feel free to post your thoughts and insight for others.
Besides this, I absolutely love my dakars. they ride good, and handle weight great. Thanks

 

thanks for the info. going to be doing this. just got mine but they are not fully insulated just the bottom 2 are

 

Greased where? Are you saying the outside metal casing needs to be greased?

 

+1 for poly. If I had known that the metal bushings were gonna give me as much trouble as they did, I would've just gone poly to begin with and not wasted my time.

 

Yeah, there should be grease on them.. Mine you can barely see that they had water in there which caused rusting and even dirt got in there. Then on top of that they aren't a very tight fit and can move around. I had one off center sticking out a 1/4" on one side and flush on the other..

 

Interesting. I never thought to grease the exterior of the bushing. Reason would think that would just allow them to rotate in the leaf. Is that what you want happening?

Also, I don't see the wheelers option. Where can you find that on their site?

 

Here's the Wheelers Poly Bushings for the Dakars... I'm pretty sure that the outside of the bushing is where the leaf spring is suppose to rotate. If you look on the inner sleeve, it has teeth on the outer edge so it bites in and stops the rubber from twisting and moving.. the rubber is basically a isolator and the outer part is the "bushing" which the leaf rotates on.. That's the way I see it, But don't quote me though.. It just makes sense to me.

 

After about a week later my bushing squeaks are still gone.. But now I get a slight leaf spring squeak or creek when they are dry. Anywhere were it looks like there is rust in-between the leafs, that's where you will get a squeak. I sprayed all my sprayed all my areas with a dry lube. And no more squeak/creak..

 

These are not like brass bushings. These rubber bushings are *not supposed to be greased*. They're *supposed* to be dry.
The only problem that you may have been experiencing, is that there was some movement between the outer sleeve and the spring eye.
**easily corrected** through the application of loctite 638 before pressing the bushing into the spring eye.

 

No. The rubber twists under load. This is the reason that *every* set of instructions for installing leaf springs have you leave the bolts loose until the weight of the truck is on them, and then torque them to spec. If you don't do it this way, then you will "preload" the rubber bushing with the weight of the truck on them, and will be overloading them (potentially tear them apart) when you cycle the suspension.

 

I understand what you guys are saying.. The problem I ran into on multiple sets of Dakars is that the bushing isn't "pressed" in at all. Its loose in the spring eye, I could just tap it out with a hammer. And mine moved side to side easily. So it will just rotate in the eye.
And I know about the correct way to install Springs, Ive been doing suspension's on Tacoma's and other vehicles for 15 years now.

 

Mine seems to be pressed, weird.

 

Mine were 'lightly' pressed. Driver's side spring would slide left and right on the bushing under the weight of the truck when flexing. Passenger side was much tighter. I was able to knock the driver's side out with a few taps of a hammer, the pass required some beating on it. Just replaced them both with the Wheeler's kit to stop the squeak from the spring rubbing on the inside of the mount on the truck.

 

If you've posted on this thread and replaced the bushings. Did it help?

It's been about a year since the last post, so that should be plenty of time to have generated thoughts.