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.
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