Pain

[Guest RED GZ]

Spent 8 hours today trying to remove old bushes from front lower wishbone in order to replace them with polyurethane ones.

What an absolute ******* ******* of a job. Removed the fr.wishbone rear bush with no hassle but the front one is of completely different construction. It has a complete metal casing and was fitted in such a way as to seemingly totally disencourage amateurs such as myself. No matter how much severe pursuassion with a hammer, followed by extreme tension and stress with sockets and sash and "G" cramps and then 2 ton car jacks with more bars and sockets and then "sod it ,lets get the blow torch on the *******, despite setting the rubber on fire lots, it STILL remains defiant:swear: .

Suffice to say that when i remove it I will slowly torture it to utter and complete destruction with some bad ass chemicals.

I will hopefully be able to get a garage I know with a 40 ton hydraulic press to remove it for me tomorrow, but does anyone know or have experience of removal of these and the best ways to approach it ?

[Guest sly]

hi have not looked at the lower arm bush but if you cut through the steel part of the bush through to the arm,taking care not to cut into the arm then you can usually drift the bushes out with hammer and punch/chisel. you may need to make 2 cuts. hope this helps

[Lucifer]

Hydrolic press is the only way to go for most of them.

[merckx]

cut through the steel part of the bush through to the arm,taking care not to cut into the arm

Exactly what I was going to say.

 

Don't cut into the arm, you'll cause a stress raiser which could result in a crack.

 

I would use a big vice to squeeze it out, a sleeve on one side against the suspension arm and a smaller one or a socket against the bush.

[Soonto_HAS_soop]

Exactly what I was going to say.

 

Don't cut into the arm, you'll cause a stress raiser which could result in a crack.

 

I would use a big vice to squeeze it out, a sleeve on one side against the suspension arm and a smaller one or a socket against the bush.

 

This is exactly what I did, I drilled through the rubber bush, then pushed it out with a 10 tonne bench press. Then I cut into the outer metal sleeve with a hacksaw, sprayed lots of WD40 over it and then continued to smack the shit out of it with a big hammer and a big chisel. One of the bushes only comes out one way as it has a large lip at the front, that at first can look like part of the arm. Took a good 60 minutes to get the first one out, then the second came out in only 30......

 

Good Luck!!