When you ask the local garage to knock the old bushes out for a drink, double the drink and get them to push the new ones in at the same time. Then take your radius arms back home and refit them to the car. That way you can use proper bushes without the need for a fully fitted workshop - use someone else's!
David LLAMA 4x4
The primary job of the bush is, in most cases, to provide a flexible link then to provide a large degree of vibration isolation - to prevent the incumbents having their teeth rattled out and the component parts falling apart.
What has not been fully realised is that the difference between bushes (including various oem and aftermarket rubber ones) is that they vary in stiffness, material hardness and, most importantly, their dampening qualities. A bush can be quite stiff but still be quite vibration absorbent for certain frequencies and magnitudes of vibration. Just because they're 'hard' or 'soft' doesn't necessarily specify how much energy will be transmitted across the bush to cause noise, vibration and/or damage, just the amount of flexibility you could expect in the coupling at very low input frequencies.
Apart from everything else, not all rubber bushes are made equal and there are too many grades of 'poly' bush materials to generalise their engineering characteristics.
Rubbish. I have pulled/pushed out many bushes using nothing more complex than a length of M12 studding, a few nuts and appropriately sized 1/2" drive sockets. For removing the awkward ones, a few seconds with a cutting torch or 10minutes with a hacksaw is more than enough.
Alex
Lucky you. I've watched 10 tons being applied before they shifted and I've also seen oxyac used in conjunction with an air chisle to get them out. Either way, not something I could do "on the driveway". Burning them out and then cutting with a hacksaw is a dangerous, messy and inefficent way really.
I have genuine reds on a 110 - the ride IS harsher but the thing doesn't wander all over the road and sway like a drunken matelot on corners. I shall be trying blues once I get round to it.
I can't say I'd want to burn them out, but although a bit messy, I can't see how cutting them with a hacksaw is dangerous. I have a press, but use the vice first off which gets most of the little s*ds, chassis bushes on Series motors I usualy manage to chisel out before resorting to the hacksaw.
Neither does mine - 200,200 miles on the original bushes (though it has had one new anti-roll bar bush, if that counts!), and one panhard rod bush (it was actually the bolt that was worn).
Richard
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