Tips and Tricks for Rebuilding Lower Control Arms

4. Three parts make up the lower control-arm bushing: an innershell, an outer shell, and rubber in between. The inner shell will comeout with the pivot shaft, leaving the rubber and outer shell. We'veheard all kinds of crazy ideas about how to get the remaining pieces outof the lower control arm, including burning out the rubber. Actually,the rubber isn't vulcanized or bonded to the shells at all, and will pryout with a screwdriver.

5. The part that can be brutal is removing the outer shell, whichremains in the control arm. Just press it out? Sorry, there's nothing topress against. The service-manual procedure is to split it along oneside with a chisel, collapse it, and muscle it out. Take it from us,it's not easy to do and will almost always result in scars, both in thebushing bores and on your hands. What's the washer for? Glad you asked.

6. A trick we use is to weld a heavy 1/8-inch or thicker 1/2-inchwasher to the end of the shell. This gives us something to pressagainst. The welds have to be solid with good penetration for this towork, but it takes only seconds per arm to zap the washers in. Ofcourse, be careful not to weld the shell to the control arm.

7. Press from the opposite side of the lower control arm wherethe nut is welded, and use a long half bolt with a nut a few threadsdown from the end. The extra couple of threads center through thewasher, and the nut gives a good surface area toward the edge of thewasher for pressure. Use a piece of pipe on the backside of the controlarm to give the bushing somewhere to go as it is being pressed out.

8. Forty-five minutes of hard hammer and chisel work are reducedto five minutes of easy welding and pressing. The bushing shell slidesright out. If you are lacking a press, the shell could probably bedriven out with a big hammer.

9. The rubber bumpstop is usually destroyed (do you see anyrubber here?) and frozen on. Though the bumpstop's mounting stud keysinto the arm to prevent it from spinning, trying to wrench off a rustyone like ours will often egg-out the mounting hole in the control arm.Use a wrench to keep it from spinning, although it's not necessary tofind a wrench as rusty as ours. Sometimes if they're really frozen, it'sbest to grind through the stud's head with an angle grinder.