Grease or no grease for UCA bushings?

Installed the passenger side JBA uca this afternoon along with my ome shocks. I tend to overthink in general and I’m wondering about greasing the bushings.

Why is the sleeve / bolt surface not greased? Toyota didn’t grease it but I think Total Chaos does. TC does not, however, grease between the pivot (don’t know if that’s what it’s called, but I’m talking about the steel tubing that the bushings are inserted in) and outside of the bushings because they say the bushing should not move in the arm.

The JBA arms are the opposite. They have zirks to grease between the steel of the pivot and the bushings, and not between the sleeve and bolt.

I haven’t greased the new arms yet and I’m wondering if I should skip it.

 

I didn't grease the bushings when I installed mine last summer, I did everything the instructions recommended and there was no mention of greasing them that I recall, just the ball joints got grease. That being said I just saw a picture in another thread of someone who just got JBA uca's and I see theirs have grease zirks going into both bushings. Mine don't have these, I just went out and checked (excuse the grime, the weather has been rough lately lol), I bought mine last June so they must have changed since then. But now this has me wondering, did JBA add zirks for the bushings due to issues, should I be watching out for premature wear, or did they just add them as a precaution?

 

Interesting. Didn’t know the zirks were an update.

 

Mine has set screws that press into the bushings, I was under the impression that they're there to keep the bushing in place

Also, I put a liberal amoiunt of grease on the bolt surface to keep corrosion at bay.

 

Found this photo. Definitely zerks there. Now I'm really curious

 

You have set screws on your bushings? That's wierd, maybe that's what I'm seeing in that other person's picture. This is the picture I saw, you can see the two little red caps on each bushing ''tube" that I assumed we're covering grease zirks since they look identical to the cap on the zirk on top of the ball joint. Are those actually the set screws on yours? Or are they grease zirks and the set screws are somewhere else? I don't have set screws either, the bushings are just pressed in there, I can't imagine they would ever try to go anywhere.

 

Those look like they're definitely zerks. If you look at the ball joint mounting plate, the same red cover is on the ball joint zerk. There was no mention about the bushing zerks in my jba install papers. I think the set screws on mine must be there to keep the threads occupied and the zerks are an optional add on.

Edit: I'm thinking these zerks are for polyurethane bushings, mine came with rubber bushings which shouldn't be greased hence the set screws.

 

Gotcha, that makes sense, although you'd think if they went through the trouble to drill/thread yours for zerks they might as well have put some in there, I wouldn't think that would make enough of a cost difference to fill them with screws vs zerks, but who knows maybe they were in transition at that point trying to decide to grease the bushings or not? When did you buy yours? I wonder if it would be necessary or worth it for me to drill mine and put zerks in, or if the new bushings are a different size/type to take grease?

 

I bought mine in Dec 2017. I just edited my previous post. I did a little googling and i think we're ok with the standard, non serviceable rubber bushings, but it would be a good idea to grease them if running poly bushings.

 

Oh I didn't even think about poly bushings, that would make sense. Mine just have the standard rubber bushings too. I guess I can rest easy then. If/when they eventually wear out maybe I'll drill them for zerks and put better bushings in.

 

I'm almost disappointed in the fact that I can't grease them now. Haha. Yep, maybe throw in some polys down the road!

 

So what do you guys think about TC not greasing theirs? Those are poly aren’t they?

 

You should grease them, but in order to do so properly you need to loosen the uca bolt I believe. Then grease the the bushing using the zerk and then retorque the uca bolt.