The previous owner showed me where he hadn't changed the bushings on the rear suspension. I thought both sides were in need of being changes and, lucky me, only the passenger side needed to be fixed. Here's a picture of what the old bushings looked like.
Removing the lower control arm was really pretty easy. I did have some problems with the bolt shown thought. The frame blocked any ability for me to get an hex head tool on the hex bolt. So I had to remove the mounting bracket from the frame itself in order to get the bolt off. But before I could do that I had to remove the rear sway bar (2 bolts) and the long bolt holding the control arm to the rear spindle.
The long bolt required that you bump it out with a hammer and another bolt that would fit into the hole. Pretty simple and it came off right away. Be careful, the end caps on the lower control arm fall off really easily - make sure you put it back together in the right order (there are a couple washers and rubber seals in the cap.
Once the lower arm was off it was time to figure out how to get the bushing off. It is a multi-piece product that had seen a better day. I found a post somewhere on line that discussed how to carefully remove the bushing. The bushing has an inner and an outer metal sleeve. The inner sleeve is pretty easy to remove. The outer one takes a bit more work to get it moving out. Here's how you can remove the bushing pretty easily.
1. Take a cutoff saw and cut the metal end off the one side of the bushing. See the picture below to see which end to remove. Unfortunately I didn't take pictures of the process with the arm removed.
2. This will free up the inner sleeve and allow you to press it out of the arm. To press it out I used a long bolt that would fit into the inner sleeve and let the head of the bolt rest on the newly cut part of the metal of the inner sleeve. On the other end I used a a large socket that would rest on over the other end of the bushing and rest on the arm itself. (See the spot indicated on the picture above. Using a nut on the bolt, tighten against the socket so that it will pull out the inner sleeve. It will take some force to pull it from the grip of the rubber bushing that remains. A could of taps on the head of the bolt with a hammer helped persuade it to move.
3. With the inner sleeve removed you can now remove any rubber remaining in the bushing housing. I used a screw driver to push it all out.
4. Now you need to get rid of the outer bushing. This is a bit more tricky seeing how it has been press fit into the control arm. The site I read said you need to CAREFULLY split the outer sleeve so that it will move easier as you work to get it out. If you have access to a professional press and tools that go with it I think you don't need to do this, just simply press it out. If not, than keep reading below.
5. Cut off the metal part of the outer sleeve as shown on the photo below. Be careful not to cut into the outer arm to badly. I used a cutoff wheel on an angle grinder.
6. With the end off I used a grinding wheel to take off any extra metal I left on the sleeve so that I could actually see the crack of the inner sleeve on the outside of the outer control arm end. Basically I cut the sleeve so that I would leave a little materiel on the control arm knowing that I could carefully grind off the extra material without cutting into the control arm too badly.
7. Then i used a sawsall with a short metal blade to reach inside of the hole in the control arm to CAREFULLY split the outer sleeve. I let the sawsall cut almost down to the crack that I exposed when I cut off the outer sleeve end. I then used a hack saw blade to carefully cut all the way through the sleeve - a little at a time. What you want to avoid doing is cutting into the control arm itself. The previous owner have me an extra control arm that had been badly cut when the last bushing was removed. I'm sure this gives you a weak point that you don't want to deal with in the future.
8. Once the inner sleeve has been split you can carefully use another socket that will rest up against the exposed inner sleeve and hammer it out. It takes a few good whacks but it moved pretty quickly.
The entire process only took me less than an hour to complete. Then I re installed the new poly bushings and bolted it all back up. I have to admit the first bushing inner sleeve I split made me sweat a bit as I didn't want to mess up the control arm. But by going slow and steady it all came off without a hitch.
I applied a little paint to the arm and it looks like this now.
