I noticed that my upper a arm on the passenger side sweaks when I push on my wheel. I can tell that it's the left side, or the side closest to the rear of the car. What can be done to fix this problem. I'm going to be removing my steering knuckles and my spring/shock because I'm upgrading, so now is a good time if things need to be replaced. What do you guys think?

 

Anyone??

 

It could be your bushings, in which case you could replace them easily when you get the shocks out. You have to remove the upper a-arm anyway.

Replacing the bushings on the uppers is not a big deal at all, so if you have it apart, you might as well. You have to burn the old bushings out, but getting the new ones in isn't a big deal, just takes some gentle persuasion. Oh, and make sure to grease them up really well.

The front lower control arm bushings are a major PITA, though. Getting the arm back in with the new bushing had me inventing new swear words. If you have the time, I would reccomend doing it though to keep from having to tear it all down again later to get to them.

I posted this on the autocross forum regarding my front end re-bush:

http://web.camaross.com/forums/showt...hreadid=237221

 

Can you just buy new sleves? I don't have access to a torch, so that might be the best for me. Do you happen to know a part number? Thanks for your help.

 

The bushing kit that I ordered from Thunder Racing (Prothane, about $40 for all front control arm bushings) included new sleeves for the upper A-arm bushings, you can reuse all the other old sleeves if you clean them up with a wire wheel.

My brother had a friend with an acetylene torch that we used, but I imagine that you could use one of those hand held propane torches that you can get at Home Depot or wherever. You don't really burn the bushing until it's all gone, you just need to get the metal really hot so that the rubber that is attached to it will liquify a bit and then you give it a good whack and it should fall out. Just clean out all the remnants before you try to put in the new bushings.

Alternatively, you could get a shop to press/burn them out. I wouldn't think that they would charge too much. We would have done that, except that in my brother's podunk little town, nothing was open past noon on Saturday.

 

You don't need a torch to burn the bushings out...all you need is some gas and a match, that's how I did mine! You can pick up a complete suspension rebuild kit from www.p-s-t.com for $249.

 

Why are you burning the old rubber bushing out if the new kit comes with new sleeves? I guess I'm a little confused about that.

 

Well, there are two sleeves, so we may be thinking of different things.

There is an outer sleeve that fits in the hole cast into the a-arm itself. This one you leave alone (at least with the prothane kit). When you burn out the rubber bushing, this should be all that is left attached to the a-arm, This sleeve has the same inner diameter as the new bushing's outer diameter. Some other kits may supply replacement outer sleeves, but I did not see any. Sorry for the confusion, all outer sleeves were reused for the prothane kit (exept for the lower a-arm vertical bushing which doesn't use outer sleeves at all).

There is also a smaller inner metal sleeve that fits through the bushing (the one that is included in the kit) through which the mounting bolt runs. Burning out the rubber lets you get these out where you can clean them up either with direct fire or a wire wheel (which I used) for reuse where necessary.

I can see how that was confusing.

 

Alright, thanks for clearing that up for me. Do you think that you could just take a drill bit to the rubber and drill it out? Just get a size that's just a step smaller than the inside of the sleeve and drill it out. Do you think that would work? I'm just not too big on the idea of burning out the rubber.

 

That would be tricky, but possible I suppose, if you used a small diameter hole saw that was large enough to go outside the inner sleeve, but still smaller than the outer. The bushing is probably around 2" in diamter. A large conventional drill bit would run up against the inner sleeve and you'd have to drill all the way through that, which might be impossible to do, not to mention that it is suspended in rubber that's jiggling around on you. I wouldn't attempt to drill the thing out with a hand drill in either case, though. With all that rubber moving around, it would be very hard to do safely. Mabe with a drill press and alot or clamps to hold the thing in place, but I'd rather take my chances with a torch.

Those things are seriously stuck in there, if you were able to somehow drill out the core of the bushing, you would still have to clean the rest of the rubber off of the inside with a dremel tool or something, which could take a long time. I had to clean the rubber off of the sleeves for the lower control arm, and it took me a while using a big hand held grinder with a wire wheel in place of the disk.

I know burning things sounds like a redneck moron way to go about repairing anything, but from what I've read, it is the most effective method, and if done properly, it is not dangerous. It's actually what the Haynes and Chilton manuals reccomend.

Be careful whatever you end up doing, getting a shop to press out the old ones is alot cheaper than a trip to the emergency room.

 

I bought the Prothane lower front control arm kit. I chucked the damn inner sleeves and the washers that go on the end. Know where I can get just the inner sleeves for the lower bushings? The Uppers came with inner sleeves.