Long time NOTHING new? NO way!!!

Here's the thing, On the schedule our next task was replacement of the LCA bushings in the front, and boy did we have our work cut out for us....

It all started a WEEK ago when we began dimantling the LCA from the car and of course we were re-introduced to our not so friendly nemesis "RUST". So all the bolts on the knuckle came off with ease (since we had "broke" them all off before) and the one last bolt that attaches the LCA to the lower cross member was seized to the metal sleeve. We PB blasted for our standard 2 day before and still to no avail to we brought out our friend "Craftsman Grinder" and grinded the head of the bolt and way and pryed the LCA out of its position. This was all over te course of 2 days.





Next was trying to find a way to get the bushing, and the METAL sleeve out. So reseach began and the team came up with all kinds of answers.
-Burn the rubber out
-Cut the rubber out
-Press with a home vise
-Press with a 25-50 ton hydraulic vertical press (IDEAL)

We couldnt find anyone with in a 30 mile radius to press the bushing so we had to resort to some old SUBARU friend that have always been there. So we planned a trip there to get the bushings pressed out. One word of warning is that people have broken presses by doing this so we kept that on the "down low" when Garage Tuning in Anaheim CA was nice enough to let us use thier press. Theirs was a 17 ton and the frame started to bend as we pressed the bushing. But to much of our enjoyment we were able to get all the center sleeves, leasving only a bit of the rubber and of course the dreaded metal sleeve in the LCA. So this now puts us 4 days into the project, much slower then the progress that we are used to but any movement forward is in the right direction.

So on the 6th day we all re-group after a day off for leisure and purchased a few new toys to help us with removing the metal sleeves in the LCA's

"Let me introduce u to my little friend" (insert italian accent, here)



So these are the necessary tools to make the metal sleeve beg for mercy. What we did was use the cut a slit in the metal so that there would be some room for them to become smaller when pryed and also to get us a lip to put our new 3000 hits/min AIR HAMMER...so 2.5 hours later we opened the garage in VICTORY and we have the sleeves out and the new bushings pressed in...






..TO BE CONTINUED/INSTALLED ON THE CAR

DISCLAIMER: We might have made it look easy, but this has got to be the hardest thing we have done