Saturday, March 7, 2015

Pressing out shock eye bushings

Initially, I was going to use the "press out the rubber then cut out the bushing shell" method. Before that though, I thought I'd have a go at pressing out the entire thing. I didn't want to risk cutting into the shock eye so this was worth a shot.

Pressing out the shock eye bushings turned out to be a fairly simple task, once you have the right tools. Isn't that always the case though? The right tools makes the hard jobs easy while having the wrong tools makes easy jobs impossible. For this job, I used a hydraulic press (12 ton cheapo from Harbor Freight < $100 on sale), a lathe, a 1 1/4" pipe coupler and a 1 1/4" pipe nipple. The 1 1/4" pipe fittings are almost the exact size needed to press out the bushing.

I started by turning the pipe coupler on the lathe. My goal was to turn the ID of the coupler to just smaller than the OD of the bushing shell. This will allow the old bushing to fall into the coupler as it's getting pressed out. Turns out that just removing the internal threads was enough of an ID reduction. Since I don't have a long boring bar, I did one side then had to flip over the coupler to cut the ID on the other side. After turning the coupler, I chucked up the 1 1/4" pipe nipple and cut the OD so it was just slightly smaller than the OD of the bushing shell. The end of the nipple comes to a knife edge so I faced it a little to get a flat surface to press against the bushing shell. I'm no machinist, but I'm starting to get pretty good at using the four-jaw chuck!


After turning, I set up the shock on the press. The shock eye sits on the pipe coupler below you press from above. I started by pressing out the bolt sleeve, then the rubber itself using sockets.


Then I set up the press using the pipe nipple pressing on the bushing shell. It takes some force to get it moving, but the 12 ton press did the job for me. There's a pop at the beginning just as the bushing shell starts to move and the rest is easy. You need to be careful at this step. The bushing shell is not very thick and lining up the pipe fitting to the shell is critical. I did both bushings on the shock this way. When I do the other shock, I think I'll try pressing out the entire bushing at once without pressing out the guts first.



Friday, March 6, 2015

Need to replace shock eye bushings too

Another thing I need to replace is the shock eye bushings. have a close look at the photos. See how the bushing is permanently deformed so the bolt hole is no longer in the center of the shock eye? I'll order up some new ones from Superformance to replace these. While I'm waiting for the parts to arrive, I guess I'll try and figure out how to remove the old bushings. I've read that these are nearly impossible to press out and a better way to go is to cut/press/burn out the center, then carefully cutting out the bushing shell. I guess I'll give this method a try.





Thursday, March 5, 2015

Left front suspension teardown

I've begun the front suspension teardown process. Like all projects, teardown is always fast but buildup can be horribly slow which is what will probably happen here. I started with the left front and disassembly was pretty straightforward. I started by removing the brake caliper and rotor. The rotor was stuck onto the hub, but it came off with some gentle persuasion with a soft blow hammer. Then I separated the ball joints and tie rod with a pickle fork. I have all new components so I wasn't worried about tearing boots with the fork. Once the steering knuckle was removed, it was pretty simple to unbolt the upper and lower A-arms.

Here's another fine example of special action required for the tight space. The end of the hard brake line is hard to reach and I had to cut off my 11mm flare wrench to have enough room to actually turn the flare nut.



The original rubber A-arm bushings looked sad. The exposed outer parts were all cracked and falling apart. I'm going to be using the 13.3101G polyurethane bushings from Energy Suspensions and following the procedures from Birdman's post on Fchat . The OEM bushings are bonded to a steel shell and the shell is spot welded into the A-arm hole. Many people in the 308 community are using this alternate method which involves just replacing the guts of the bearing while leaving the shell in place. This is what I will be doing as well.




I started by cutting off the end of the bushing using a reciprocating saw, being careful to not cut into anything important. To press out the old rubber bushings, I planned on using my cheapo HF 12 ton press. That plan got changed when I realized the A-arm won't fit in the press so I dropped to the next idea which involved sockets, a C-clamp and a propane torch. Some people burn out the old rubber but I just used the torch to heat the bushing shell. This broke the bond enough for the makeshift press to force out the rubber.





Here's a shot of the old bushing next to the new bushing. The new one does come with a metal sleeve, but the guts pull out pretty easily. The polyurethane part is in two pieces and fits inside the A-arm shell perfectly.



A lot of people decide at this point to media blast the A-arms and powder coat. I decided to not go that far. This is not a show car and maybe I would do that if I were doing a full restoration. Instead, I cleaned up the A-arms, sprayed some Permatex rust converter on the ends that were lightly rusted, then coated them with some satin clear coat. This had the added bonus of preserving the patina of these old parts. When I was cleaning, I came across "AS USA" painted on the upper A-arm. According to Fchat users, this means A-arms for the GTS USA market. No one really knows why they're marked this way from the factory, but it's a cool piece of history that would be lost forever if I blasted them.