Ah, the good old puck debate.
First I must say that this debate is always full of people saying things they have heard re saying them as fact having no experience in real life. I will state I have real world experience.
Puck are made of vulcanized rubber, much the same as what all tires are made of. When used as a body lift they are loaded in compression, by the force exerted from the mounting hardware. A preload force we could say. Also from the weight of the body, static and impulsive due to trail and or street driving.
Under compressive loading pucks can take higher loads then most would think, much more then a body weighs. And this is for one puck while everyone knows a body is supported by more then one body mount. I have done some compressive testing but am nowhere close to completing the test results and full write up I have been wanting to do for some time on this debate.
To the weathering side of the debate. I have run pucks on my BII for 6 years in MI. That means salt, warm, cold and so on. I recently rebuilt my BII by redoing the suspension and putting a Ranger can on my BII frame. The cab I got had shot body mounts. So I used the old body lift pucks that where under my BII body as body mounts under my Ranger cab. These pucks had been run for 6 years and had very little signs if at any signs of deformation. The later years of this 6 year run period they had been subject to sub zero wheelin. So this put impulsive loading on the puck from –10 to –40 degree days and nights, No wind chill. These temps are from da U.P. of MI. They are still doing great under the Ranger cab and know they will still do so for many year to come.
I have been intending on a full write up on compressive loading and weathering effects on pucks preformed at Michigan Technological University by myself, four year M.E. student with help from a few material science friends to finally put this debate to rest with hard facts and not hearsay. I have been promising this for a year now and haven’t gotten it done, but damnit I will get it done.