I did roughly the same thing. Found the biggest shittiest flat blade screwdriver I had around, hammered that ****er into the eyelet slit, and then abused the hell out of a vise to get the bushings started.
We have the biggest arbor press I've ever seen (the thing must be 3 feet tall, and it's a table mounted one) at work, so the rest was easy, I just put em in there and leaned on it
Driver side was cake, it's all buttoned up except the final torque on the bolts (waiting till it's on the ground again for that so the bushings don't get preloaded), passenger side is being a douchebag. Got it all apart, but mangled the leaf eye weldnut in the process, so I attempted to chase the threads with a poor man's tap (old cut in half leaf bolt with a slot ground into the threads) which didn't work for more than a turn or two. Soon as I get over the fact that I'm bleeding rather badly from one knuckle I'm gonna give it another shot.
that's like one of three fasteners on an XJ that I really hate.
PS: I need to order shackles tomorrow, the passenger side one is really damn rotted. Welp.
