View single post by Jensenman
 Posted: 02-03-2009 04:21 pm
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Jensenman

 

Joined: 04-14-2005
Location: Columbia, South Carolina USA
Posts: 156
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 When I did my front end, the lower bushings were rusted to the arms, not terribly unusual. This meant I had to remove the rubber (I used a torch to burn it out, nasty stinky!) then used a hacksaw to split the outer sleeve. When I started pressing the bushings in, they immediately began to go in cockeyed, not good. In fact, I had to get another control arm and bushing.

So when I started on round 2, I used a wire brush to thoroughy clean the inside of the bushing hole in the arm. Lubrication was necessary, since regular oil/grease will attack rubber I didn't want to use that. Instead, I lubed the sleeve and the arm hole with silicone dielectric grease which won't attack rubber. Instead of a press (way too easy to apply too much pressure and hard to properly align) I used a short piece of schedule 40 steel pipe as a receiver, I used a threaded cap on that end and drilled a 1/2" hole in the center. I then used a piece of 7/16" 'all thread' (it's the only thing that will fit through the stock lower bushing sleeve) and a couple of really big flat washers to draw the bushing into the arm. This setup is self aligning as long as the pipe is cut dead square. It took some effort but worked well.