Shop Press for Bushings: Adapters?

I am considering purchase of the following 12-ton, "Central Hydraulics" A-frame, shop press for removing old control arm bushings and pressing new ones in place.

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I see people use socket wrenches, sometimes nuts and bolts, sometimes a bit of pipe to adapt to the particular control arm (say) and push out the old bushing (or push in the new).

Can anyone who has done this share any other wisdom, including safety precautions?

Of course I will study the manual like mad.

Having just my one set of wheels, for $80 I think I'd like to try to do this myself.

Reply to
Elle
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Most control arm bushings really don't require a whole lot of force to press in/out, large sockets and/or well chosen pieces of steel pipe will work fine.

the key is whenever pressing, to never bend the "ears" that the bushings are pressed into; i.e. when pressing the bushings in, cut yourself a piece of pipe, angle iron, whatever so that the ears are held their exact original distance from each other.

Rather than use a press to remove the old bushings, I usually walk them out with an air hammer and dull chisel. Usually works fine although sometimes they fight you and need to be mangled a little bit. I've done this on quite a few old Studebakers (the rubber bushings seem to disintegrate if you look at them funny) with no problems; other cars with short/long arm front suspension ought to be similar. I know the upper control arms on an old A-body MoPar look very, very similar.

good luck,

nate

Reply to
N8N

A 12 ton may not be enough - Dunno what you're working on, but the factory manual on my ride tells me that I need to be using an absolute minimum of a 20 ton press, and recommends a 30, for doing ball joints, and that if they seat with less than 14 tons of pressure, the control arm is stretched excessively and needs to be replaced.

As far as "adapters", well... Speaking from a purely "seat of the pants" perspective, pick something seriously stout. I ended up using the input-shaft bearing out of an old caterpillar transmission when I did mine - Diameter was about perfect, catching the "lip" on the ball joint and letting me mash it as hard as I cared to without crushing the bottom of the ball joint. (Force was all on the inner race - I wouldn't even

*TRY* using it for something that needed to mash something the outer race was sitting on)

Anything "lightweight" stands a very real chance of "exploding" under the pressure and showering you with shrapnel, so a *HEAVY* blanket or quilt over the whole thing when actually doing the press isn't a bad idea if you've got any doubts - The blanket may not completely stop anything that "escapes", but it should slow it down enough that instead of needing a surgeon to dig it out, you only need to ice a bruise.

Reply to
Don Bruder

I remember the good ol' days, when the spring pressure pulled the ball joints into the control arm...

Dave

Reply to
spamTHISbrp

It's a 91 Civic Sedan that's seen several years of northern winters. Some of the bushings are horrendous looking. Ride seems okay, but ya know the degradation undoubtedly has been slow but sure. Folks tell me I'll see a difference. Plus the dr. side is lower by about 3/4-inch. I'm troubleshooting that and so far have removed the coil/damper assemblies in the front in their entirety and couldn't find anything wrong with them. I suspect the bushings are over compressed on one side. I will be doing more inspecting in the next few days, under load and not under load. If I actually go at the bushings, it will be a multi-week project. 'Cause I need a ball joint separator, gotta buy the bushings, etc. I think I could potentially take this car to 300k miles if I can get the suspension (especially bushings and maybe ball joints) in better shape. It has 175k on it now. I stay well on top of engine maintenance, and the engine runs well. 40 mpg most of the year.

Been talking about working on the bushings for a couple years now. Did some major work on the dr. side rear 1.5 years ago. Hellacious. But I'm better prepared now.

I sure appreciate the input, Don and Nate. All you're saying goes into my notes.

Reply to
Elle

Much oblighed, aarcuda, especially the safety tip.

Dave, fortunately I did take one automotive suspension class and saw the weight of the car used to separate the ball joints (helped by a few hammer blows), and then I think spring force was used to join them again. Sure helps to have seen this once.

"aarcuda69062" wrote snip for brevity; all comments noted

Reply to
Elle

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describes the approach I used, with success, to remove the bushings from my 91 Honda Civic's front lower control arms. It is a combination of hints from here and elsewhere. I developed this approach over the last four days, using the larger bushing on an old, bent control arm for practice. Today, using this new approach, I was able to remove the smaller bushing in bout an hour. It required very little labor.

The remaining question is whether I can now slip the new bushings into place without a shop press.

Reply to
Elle

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