I thought it was gonna be easy to remove the bushings. I see the old bushings are set into a steel canister or sleeve or shell like thing. I know I have to reuse that. So how do I remove the old bushings from inside the canister or sleeve or whatever it's called?? Thanks.

 

Stock control arms?

 

Yup. Stock ones.

 

Are you installing poly bushings? If so, use a Dremmel or a drill and drill a bunch of holes in the rubber until you can push the inner sleave out, then just kind of whittle away at the rubber left in the shell. If you're just replacing with stock rubber bushings in stock arm, you would be money ahead by replacing the whole arm.

 

Yup, I'm installing poly bushings. I'll try to drill a bunch of holes and see how that comes along.

 

air wrench but i replaced mine with new ones.
i used a skilsaw first but that was like torching stainless steel nothing happened

 

Beat me to it

 

Drilling the rubber out gets kind of messy with hot melted rubber flying around. Wear some goggles and don't track the rubber into the house, the little lady may kill you.

 

I've seen a video about a guy pushing the rubber out of the "metal canister", but when I did my control arm bushings the new ones had the inner rubber and the canisters together already as one unit. I used a chisel bit on the air hammer to work around the lip edge while prying a little and the whole thing popped right out. Lined up the new one, tapped it a couple times with a hammer to make sure it was seated straight and then used a flat end bit again with the air hammer to push it in. Mine were regular rubber though, not poly.

hope that helps

-bob-

 

BTW did you get to the drivers side upper CA bushing yet? That was interesting.

-bob-

 

That works for removing the whole bushing, but with the poly insert, you have to reuse the outer shell.

 

When I set out to do this I thought about using poly bushings and was wondering if that was the way it worked. Thanks for the info.

When I started doing the suspension work I picked up a 6 ton press from HF and the first arm I took down I tried the press on it. With the right socket the rubber popped out quick as could be. Of course for my application I needed to remove the sleeve as well so I proceeded to fold it like an origami pelican with the air hammer. It was fun :-)

-bob-

 

You know what I say after using an air hammer? WHAT?

 

What do you mean?

 

Deaf from all of the noise.