Finally got around to re-bushing my rear spring. One of the
british car mags happened to have an article recently on rebushing,
and the technique they used for removing the old ones was pretty
strange.
They burned out the rubber with a propane torch, and then used a
hacksaw to cut out the sleeve. This struck me as a pretty messy
and overly arduous method, especially the hacksaw part.
The following method worked extremely smoothly for me: Insert a 3/8
carriage bolt through the eye, and put a deep 1" socket on the other
side. Cap the back of the socket with a couple of flat washers and
screw on a hex nut. Make sure the socket is aligned properly to take
the bushing when it comes through. Tighten the nut and the head of
the carriage bolt will pull the rubber through into the socket.
Disassemble the lot, discard the rubber and repeat the above procedure
with a socket at the head of the carriage bolt of the correct size to
push out the sleeve. 9/16" worked well for me.
The reason for extracting the rubber first and then the sleeve is that
if you try to press them both out together, the rubber will compress
at the pressure end and increase the interference to the point where
you can shred the bolt threads.
Pressing in the new bushing can be done using the same 9/16" socket.
One useful tip: Beneath the head of a carriage bolt there is a square
flange. Put a spanner of suitable size on this before you start
tightening. This will allow you to prevent the bolt from turning as
you tighten the nut from the other end.
Warning, buy plenty of carriage bolts, at least 2x the number of bushes
you're replacing. The interference was so severe that after each
extraction or installation the bolt was too damaged for reuse. Make
sure they're long enough to go through two deep sockets as well as the
spring eye. 8" was barely long enough.
Happy sworking,
Dan
P.S. "Sworking" can also mean "sweating and working". I was told
after I finished that it had gotten up to 110 degrees that day.
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