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.