Im in the middle of replacing my control arm bushings. Im hoping some of you might have some tips or tricks on how to remove the bushings from the control arms (i am doing upper and lower) since im having some difficulty doing this. I have tried using my shop press but it isnt working. Also if any of you have any tips removing the lower control arm would be appreciated since i have came across alot of people having problems with the torsion bars and im hoping to remove upper and lower control arms but not removing the cv shafts. thanks for the help

 

For the cost of a complete upper or lower control arm I'd just replace the entire arm, bushings & all. You have all the steel being new & clean & painted & new bushings & not the PITA of trying to replace just the bushings... although you may get a kick out of making up new swear words. Also slap a lot of anti seize on all the bolts, bushings, surfaces that touch etc.

As for the lower & t bars - PB Blaster & a lot of it on the keys to free things up. That & a BFH! you have to take the stress off them to remove them & the stress is from the t bars. You have to loosen & back them out to remove the lower control arm.
<-- bad key! I had to cut it with a cutting disk on an angle grinder to remove it from the end of the T bar when installing the SL. Then wedge it apart with a chisel.

 

Do not even try to remove the tbar without a tbar tool. Very, very bad things can happen!

 

Im not gona buy new control arms since they are fine. I am wire wheeling them and repainting along with all new bushings, ball joints, sway bar linkage, and shock absorbers while im doing this. PB blaster is a good friend of mine and i hardly forget the antisiese. I was wondering if anybody has sucessfuly removed the bushings from the control arms without spending a week just to do it. Any suggestions on a good quality t-bar tool for the job since i dont want to end up like the guy at autozone telling me he broke his arm when removing the t-bar with a c-clamp

 

I've used a c clamp a few times now. I only use it to just keep the key off the adjusting block/nut. There isn't a whole lot of tension left by that point.

 

You can try and torch the old bushings out I've seen that done several times on the rear leaf spring bushings I'm sure it would work fine on the front since you are replacing them anyway.

 

I had purchased new control arm bushings for all 4 arms, burned out the bushings out of one, tried to put the new bushings in and squat the arm just trying to put it in, its very thin metal and not worth it in my opinion. Had to buy a new arm but its a lifetime warranty one so its not that bad. But definetly not worth it in my opinion.

 

If you have the contol arms removed do what I did and take it to a local shop to see how much they would charge to press out/in the old/new bushings.

 

Ain't worth all that dickin' around for $75. Once you have the wheel off, half hour later you're done.

 

Agreed!