Mine are fine, did you put the supplied lube on the sides of the lower arm bushings before installing or did you lube the fittings? If you lubed the fittings after they are installed and put too much in them it is possible to mess up the bushing itself too.
The stock bushings are plyable rubber and are stationary at the mounting points, where the bolt goes thru due to the teeth in the inner metal bushing being clamped (pinched) to the chassis mounting bracket and rubber being bonded to the outer metal shell which is pressed into the stock control arm. So, this design actually has no moving parts, so to speak in the up and down movement of the arms, just the rubber flexing/twisting. The lowers you installed does have the bushings moving inside the control arm and/or the inner metal sleeve that is used for the bolt that attaches it to the chassis. That moving bushing, if moving with the arm, will cause the binding in the chassis mount and cause your noise.
The uppers with the sperical ends are probably not the cause of the noise although the factory design does induce bind at extreme suspension movement limits. I installed mine so I could correct the pinion angle after getting the ride height where I wanted it. I kept the stock bushing on the housing end of the uppers though so as to limit the amount of bind that a stiffer bushing would give in the up and down travel. The stiffer bushings will help with lateral stability but I installed a panhard bar to correct that problem.
