So I ordered some new bushes through Mike at Yesterford and I received Nolathane front & rear eye & shackle, and Superpro saddle bushes.
 
The Rear eye has no crush tube. Superpro kit appears to have crush tubes when looking at the kits on ebay.
Can anyone confirm?
 
Front eye is the biggest issue though (Nolathane part number 47028) With the crush tubes too short, the suspension will pivot on the outer faces of the bush. Is this intentional?
 
 
 

The bushes definitely need to have crush tubes , they will suffer without them.  as for the short ones, they are just as useless if the don't meet the edges.  I have fully poly bushed the entire car and all have crush tubes - even tho the bushes are much tougher than rubber ones , they are still under enormous pressure.  Len

This really annoys me. Surely they (Nolathane) would know this? I know when I bought superpro saddle bushes for my Mk1 a few years ago, they didn't fit! How hard can it be?

The rear shackles of the rear leaf springs do not have crush tubes. They never did, even from factory. So there's no problem there.
 
Your front eye bushes do have crush tubes which should be the width of the bush. There's a problem there.

Yeah I spoke with John from Nolathane today. They supply the front eye bush kit with 67mm tubes. The factory length is 74mm. What a f*ck up

60mm spring with 67mm crush tube is about right. You can't directly compare rubber bush crush tube to poly bush ones. with poly bushes you want crush tube shorter so that there is some preload on the bushes, obviously the length of tube will be dependant on bush width.I also run same bushes and agree that the crush tubes are a bit too short and should be around 1-1.5 mm longer for a better fit. Although not perfect you can run them as supplied by nolathane there will just be a bit more preload on bushes.

Cheers

Ok. So you just cleaned up the front eye box sections and greased the bush faces? Superpro is a poly bush and they supply the factory length tube, 74mm. I thought the bushes were designed to pivot on the tubes, not the faces.

Yes box section mating surfaces need to be cleaned up and greased. Super pro may come with 74 mm tube but overall bush width is probably wider than nolathane, the box sections will flex some to allow for these variances. Poly Bushes do pivot around the crush tube but spring sideways movement is completely controlled by bush side faces and their preload. Obviously lack of bush preload due to crush tube being as long as the bush width or longer will result in more spring sideways movement. Stock bush doesn't pivot at all it flexes instead as it is one piece.
Don't forget to tighten all spring bolts at ride height.

Cheers

Great advice. Thanks

My reply from Nolathane
 
"Hi Haydn,

 
Feel free to fit these bushes as these are all we have supplied for a number of years. You are completely covered under our warranty terms should and problems occur.
Be sure to grease the outer face of the bush to our slip.
 
Cheers,"