Suspension Bushing - Nylon

Video Transcript for Dexter Nylon Suspension Bushing Installation

Shane: Hey, guys. Shane, here, with etrailer.com. Today, I'm going to walk you through how to install the Dexter nylon suspension bushings.Suspension bushings are designed to go in the rolled ends of your springs, your leaf springs. And what it allows the springs to do is to move freely. It also creates kind of a hold on it, so there's not a gap in that spring or that rolled end of that spring doesn't move around on that bolt. The inner diameter of the bushing is going to be nine sixteenths; the outer diameter of the bushings is going to be eleven sixteenths, and they're going to be an inch and three quarters long.

Again, these are nylon. These are going to come in different lengths and different diameters. So you just want to make sure you're getting the correct size diameter for the bolts that you have on your trailer. The bolt.. These also, you can also pick up wet equalizer bolts and what the wet equalizer bolt is that it has a zerk fitting on the end, on the head side, and it allows you to grease the inside where that rolled into that spring is.

They can be used with nylon or with the bronze. If you do a wet bolt, I recommend using the bronze because the bronze, the metal on that is going to definitely outlast the nylon.You can find all the different sizes of bushings and the different bolts here at etrailer.com. Now that we've gone over some of the features, let's walk through how to get them installed.So, your installation. You need to get your axle on jack stands. And the reason I like to do this is so when I take the bolt out, this is lined up, and I don't have a whole lot of movement I have to worry about.

We'll be able to get this bolt out easy and get our next one put back in pretty easy. So put a jack stand on each side, and it's a good idea to do both this one and the other one at the same time, if you can. It makes it easier because you take out one, you're going to have to pull down on this spring a little bit to get it out. If you do both, the back of the axle or the back side of the spring is loose. So when you lower your jacks a little bit, the bottom of the spring will drop out.

It'll allow you to put your bushing in a little bit easier.So now we're going to take a thirteen sixteenths socket. If your bolts are kind of rusted up, got gunked up, I'd put some kind of de-greaser, something to take off some of that rust or loosen it up, at least, when you go to take off the nut on the backside.I said thirteen sixteenths, this is actually going to be a seven eighths for the nut side. You shouldn't have to put anything on this side because it's going to have teeth on it that actually hold in place inside the hole. If they get really wore out this will spin. So you will need a wrench for that, just like that. You can see that.So on our bolt side, head side, we'll put the thirteen sixteenths. Then we're going to take a hammer. We're going to put just a little bit of pressure on there. Normally you're going to have to hit the bolt side a little bit harder, because again, you're going to have teeth here that will create grooves inside this plate. So you'll have to hit it pretty hard a few times to get those teeth to loosen. And then, if you just take a screwdriver. You can pop your bolt out. All we're going to do is we're going to kind of pull this down. We're going to remove our old bushing and you can see this one's actually broke in half.And then we can slide our new one in. We use our jack, raise our axle back up. Get it lined up with the hole. Looks like it's a little bit off, but that's okay. Be careful if you do this, so you don't damage your bushing, but if it's not lined up exactly right, you can take this and just kind of pry back just a little bit, to get that actually to pull back. Your bolt, you can put it in either way. You can go in this way or you can go this way. I'm just matching what the rest of them are. Kind of pry that back a little bit. Once you get it started, take a hammer.These are the teeth that I was talking about. So now what we're going to do is we're going to hammer this in all the way till the back of the head is flush on this plate, these teeth are going to grind little slots inside that plate and keep that bolt from spinning. Now we're going to put on our nut. On the nut, you're going to notice on one side, there's going to be little grooves put in it. That's because this is a lock bolt or lock nut. You can see how it's kind of oblong or oval shaped almost, or oblong shaped where the other side is round. This side is going to go on the nut or on the bolt because this will not bolt on. So we'll throw that on, so it stops. Take our seven eighths socket. We're going to tighten it down. What we don't want to do is we don't want to squeeze these two plates together to where this spring doesn't move. We just want to get it tight enough, just like that. Once you get one installed, go ahead and repeat the process for the other ones. Re-install your wheels. And you're ready to go. That's going to do it for looking at installation on the Dexter nylon suspension bushings.