Anyone have some magic bushing insertion tool?

[vagabond]

Anyone in between Mountain View and south San Jose have some sort of ball joint press or magical bushing insertion tool for doing the axle side upper control arm bushing? I'm putting in new rubber bushings.


I'm currently in the middle of doing them on my xj and.... doing the upper axle bushing got to be a bit of a snag. Getting the first one off was hard enough, but got the driver side done at least.
Currently 3/8 on all the bushings and one of the lca bushings wasn't even pressed into the arm when I removed them.

I might be able to offer beer or tasty food for use of a ball joint press or some other magic insertion tool.

 

[the_weirdo]

I think you can rent them from Auto Zone. If not, Harbor Freight in Sunnyvale(?) at Lawrence Expwy and Stevens Creek should have a set you can buy.

 

[vagabond]

I'll have to see if they're open tomorrow.

 

[vagabond]

I ended up grabbing one of those harbor freight ball joint presses. It ended up making the whole job much easier.
The upper bushings where still a bitch.
2 of the 4 bushings on the bottom were not even seated in the control arms. That does explain most of the shit handling/weird noises/etc.

Whole jeep drives better now, tested it in a high speed romp on the fwy and its much more stable at speed. No more high speed wandering, weird clunks or the jeep feeling like it wants to randomly take off of in random ass directions!

 

[Letterman]

Bushing issues are always fun, when it is almost gone and the bolt clinks back and forth off the metal . . . sorry I did not see this before I could have hooked you up, the ball joint press can get it done but the 16 ton press works better!

 

[vagabond]

Bushing issues are always fun, when it is almost gone and the bolt clinks back and forth off the metal . . . sorry I did not see this before I could have hooked you up, the ball joint press can get it done but the 16 ton press works better!

Yeah... a press would have been nice, hah.
A bench vise and a 3ft steel pipe worked pretty well for getting everything back together.

Somewhat surprisingly none of the bushings were worn to the point of missing rubber... Just that some of the LCA bushings were no longer pressed into their control arms and were kind of flopping around.