Rear suspension cross member bearing

Originally Posted by ufoz8mycow

I was getting ready to write a post about how the stealership kindly informed me that my diff bushing was cracked and leaking this morning after I took my car in for an oil change but then I saw this thread.

If this is covered under warranty, is it covered under the normal 3 yr/36k warranty or the 5yr/50k powertrain warranty (Differential = part of the powertrain, no?)? My car of course has 39k miles on the clock and the last time I got my oil changed nobody mentioned anything about differential bushings showing any wear. The guy at the dealer said it is around $1600 to do the job, which is not cool, especially considering a quick search on the interwebz reveals that a whiteline or energy suspension replacement bushing can be had for around 50 bucks.

How much should a non-rapey-bend-you-over-with-the-bill mechanic charge to replace the diff bushing if I provide the part?

For those of you that have installed aftermarket bushings, how do you like them so far? Improvement vs. stock? I'm assuming the solid SPL will probably be a little noisier than the other options, do the energy or whiteline bushings make any extra noise vs. stock? If you could go back and do it again would you still go with the aftermarket or replace with a stock bushing (which doesn't sound great given the stock is prone to failure and I don't want to deal with this every 30-40k miles)? Thanks in advance for any insight.