Preface to the $@!#&^! Drawer Volvo S&V 40 sway bar

Volvo S&V 40 sway bar bushings

Parts like rubber bushings, mostly in automobile suspensions are expected to have a lifespan much shorter than other parts of the car. Rubber will wear out and everybody knows this. Think of tires. They are replaceable. Think of rubber suspension bushings. Then think of the rubber sway bar bushings on the Volvo 40 series cars and you wonder which engineers were asleep.

Actually an engineer who was worth his salt couldn't sleep if he [or she] was to put a replaceable rubber bushing in an almost irreplaceable location.I think the engineers are in a semi-sleep condition behind the screens of their CAD laden computers. Since models change fast, you can make all this happen only on a computer. Say you are an engineer designing a front suspension and you put the bolts holding the sway bar bushing aft and it probably looks OK. Here is what happens. The next group of clowns has designed the body of the car and when they fit the body to the suspension, those bolts that hold the sway bar bushings are now caught in a place that can only be reached by extreme unction. Goddammit indeed. So is this a case of corporate engineering deniability or are these guys simply fuckheads? I don't think we will ever know, but in the past era of long model runs such problems could be corrected.

No more: brand new redesigned everything will always put something simple and replaceable into a spot unreachable by the human hand.