After finding out that the rubbers for a unibody are not reproduced and mine are toast I had to come up with something else. I found some neoprene spring rubber which is weather resistant,oil resistant, abrasion resistant and impact resistant with a durometer rating of 75A. Sounds like promissing stuff. I got some 6" long 2 1/2" diameter with a 3/4" hole through the center pieces.
I acquired the rubber from Mcmaster-Carr, http://www.mcmaster.com/#8637k311/=69r520
The original upper mounts look like they started life as a 2 5/16" diameter, 1" tall, with a 3/4" hole through the center and a 1 5/16" diameter, 3/16" recess in the top.
The original lower rubber looks like it started out as a 2" x 2" square, 9/16" tall, with a 3/4" hole through the middle.
I found that a chop saw does an excellent job of cutting rubber.
First I cut the top mounts to the 1" thickness required.
Next I had to cut the 3/16" recess for the 1 5/16" washer. The only thing I had in my tool box that would do this is a vast collection of hole saws. So I got it set up in my drill press, using a 3/4" hole saw to aproximately locate the center of the rubber followed by progressively larger (or smaller depending how you start out) hole saws, minding the depth of each saw, until I had the cut I needed. I tried a grinding stone for this operation and it did not work at all.
I used a carbide bur with my dremel to clean up the cut.
Now on to the lower rubbers. I could not find any square bars of rubber with the 3/4" hole so I just used what I had to make them. I cut them to the 9/16" thickness needed with the chop saw. Now comes making them square.
I used one of the old rubbers with a 3/4" spacer to approximate the cuts and made the cuts with the chop saw. The old rubber was removed while making the cuts to avoid damage toit. Do this until all for sides have been cut.
Old on left. New on right.
I did not worry about the 3/16" larger diameter (2 1/2" rather than 2 5/16") of the new upper rubbers. Hopefully it does not come back to bite me in the but. So now after many, many, many hours of labor the rubbers are ready!
The only other thing I decided to reproduce is the 3/4" od, .600" id, 1 11/32" tall spacer. I made this out of 3/4", .065" wall stainless steel tube. This one's easy measure twice, cut once with the chop saw.
I also purchased some grade 8 fine thread 1/2" bolts 4 1/2" long and grade 8 nuts to match. I was able to find the large od flat washers on the very bottom in stainless. I could not find the upper 9/16" id, 1 5/16" od, 3/16" thick flat washers in anything - steel or stainnless. I'll probably have a bud whip out a few on his lathe.
The bolts are only hand tight at the time of writing this.
So there. Hopefully this will help those unibody folks who need to replace cab mounting rubbers but can't find them anywhere.
