Bushing (isolator) - Applications

Applications

• In vehicles:
  • Sway bar links and mountings
  • Shock absorber mountings
  • Double wishbone suspension assemblies
  • Gear stick for vehichles with a manual transmission
• Norton Commando motorcycle
• In skateboards, bushings enable the tilting of the trucks, thus allowing the board to turn.
• In fastening, bushings are also used to transfer loads from a fastening to a much larger area in the underlying structure, the object being to reduce the strain on individual fibers within the underlying structure. (See also grommet.)
• In crankshaft balancing, certain high-speed inline internal combustion engines are prone to torsional vibration of their crankshafts; the straight six and straight eight engines being particularly prone to this problem due to their long crankshaft length. Although straight eight engines faded from the marketplace in the 1950s, many straight six engines have and still do feature crankshaft vibration damping utilizing rubber bushes. The 3,442 cc Jaguar XK 6-cylinder engine of 1948 and most subsequent versions of the ubiquitous Jaguar XK engine used a proprietary Metalastik vibration damper to protect their crankshafts from potentially damaging torsional vibrations. To quote William Heynes, "The Metalastik damper consists of a steel plate to which is bonded, through a thick rubber disk, a malleable iron floating weight. Variations of the weight, rubber volume and mix, give these dampers a very wide field over which they can operate."