How often do you have to change your torque rod bushings?

Hi all,
The trucks I maintain both seem to fail yearly safety inspections for torque rod bushings. I replace both with OEM KW or Freightliner depending on the truck but nevertheless, I end up having to replace them every year for cracking. Is this pretty common?

 

mechanics at my place say they go out all the time due to poor design -

 

What kind of suspensions are the trucks running?

Most trucks I've seen all have 46k or 69k rear suspensions (AG200/400, Hendrickson extended leaf, Airliner, Primax). Never really seen any issues with the torque arm bushings. These trucks ran off highway all the time too.

 

Show us which one.

My guess is your talking about the tracking rod. Frame to axle horizontal?

These take a beating from lots of turning on the drives. What's the application?

 

The KW has the 8 bag suspension with two per axle, I'm not to sure about the Freightliner but it's a single rod. The dealer calls it the torque rod but yeah, track rod works as well, the freightliner is shimmed to align the axles. Both trucks are OTR 40k average load, running the east coast and occasionally east coast to mid west and back.

 

Wow. Q/C must be #### these days. Old man had the 12 bag (tridrive) and I don't think those bushings ever wore out. 4 years of bushroads.

 

Are the atro bushings any better? I'm looking for options because they're a hassle to deal with, quick google search yielded the freightliner has the airliner suspension. The airglide ones are always in worse shape compared to the 8 bags. I've heard atro ones can be harsher but I'm not too sure how the bushing would communicate that into the frame if they're just keeping the axles aligned.

 

Some weather cracking of the rubber that is exposed is normal and not cause to condemn them. Do you have a picture of how bad? They should last for years.

 

I'll see if I can find some of the old ones. They're cracked but not majorily, more cosmetic than anything, its tiny spider cracking no tears, no separation or delamination. But I still end up having to replace the bushings every year for cosmetic cracks even though they're perfectly fine, I'm thinking of getting the trucks inspected at their respective dealers in a few months and seeing if I end up having to replace them. I'm starting to think they're just trying to get me to let them do them and they're still in operable condition.

 

Who’s doing the inspection...?