Hey everyone,

I wanted to share a little project I've been working on for a bit. I picked up some round (not square) GMPP trailing arms, and decided to go for some poly bushings. A lot of people swear by the UMI and BMR arms, but the arms themselves don't make that much of a difference the bushings do. The strength of trailing arms only comes into play when in Reverse, the lateral arms take all the weight when cornering. We all know the problem with the stock arms is they bend easily, but I have yet to see anyone bend or break one from cornering. Curbs, rust, those are the things that do them in. Either way I upgraded to Dormans, and now upgraded to GMPP rounds. At some point GM started using Dorman's square style in place of the rounds. Mothers day is coming up and my mother-in-law has a 99 GP, so she get's my Dormans, lol. Anyways, the difference people feel is the poly bushings in the BMR\UMI arms, the stock bushings are soft so they allow the entire rear suspension shift slightly. Poly doesn't allow this as we know.

So I pressed out the stock bushings:


Then I measured the stock tubes with my caliber and found that the Energy 3.2125G (or R if you wanna go fast since they're red) would be the closest fit. I called Energy with my measurements to make sure, and they agreed. I bought some on Amazon for $35 for the set, and this is how they fit:




Needed some cutting, lol. 7mm on the wider bushing and 14mm on the narrower side. I used my Dremel to take off the majority of the poly.
Measured:


After cutting:


Then I used my hand held grinder to clean it all up and flatten everything out. I knew I'd have to take more off before the final install, so I left myself some extra material:


And finally installed:




All I have left to do is cut the sleeves down and install them. I might have to drill out the front trailing arm bracket to 9\16" since that' what the Energy Sleeves take for fasteners, we'll see. The stock sleeve does fit for the front, but it's about 1mm to short. I might run it, I might not. We'll just have to see.

What do you guys think?