Hello,my nephew has an r53 and we have been trying for 10 hours to get the bearing sleeves out.The car is on a ramp in a local garage,who let us do this because we thought it was a couple of hours to do.How wrong we were.
I urgently need the lower control arm rear bushing removal and installation tool and i hope someone in sunderland or the surrounding area can loan or hire us it tomorrow as we are now holding up the garage.
Please let me know asap,i will come and collect no problem.
Thank you.
Before you take the lower control arms out of the bushing, did you mark the lower control arms with a dab of paint and also the bushing casing to correspond with the tringle mark on the rubber bushing ? if your replacing with OEM then this is critical to re-install the lower control arms correctly. If, however, your replacing with poly bushing you can forget this step. You can use a 3 jaw puller to remove the LCA from the bushing and a sabre saw to cut the old bushing out but be careful you don't score the housing inside. YouTube has a few videos, Modmini comes to mind, If you cant get the removal/installation tool, I would recommend you replace with Poly bushes as it will be a lot easier to reinstall.
As per Milpol. Don't replace with OEM rubber jobs. Useless. Cause most of the crashing. Put in Powerflex poly bushes - PFF5-101. About £55 a set - you don't have to bugger about 'marking' anything, much easier to put in and the affect on ride and feel is miraculous. I've just done it.
And the Bergen tool is only £37 on fleabay. https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Car-Cont...coding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=MSJE3JGF2BCC7AWW7QZB
Yup it is a ***** of a job.
Poly bushes all the way. Much easier to fit and like others have said it improves the ride and steer quality massively. I only fit polys when a car requires it. It's also the best time to renew the inner and outer balljoints as well as the arb bushes!
Well done Topper, great to hear you've got it sorted. Hope your nephew is appropriately grateful and likes the poly bushes.
Out of interest, was the Bergen tool useful/helpful? I bought one for 'my man' who does the work on my Mini as a little present. So have not used it myself. I don't want to be suggesting it if it is useless!!
As long as the bushing sleeve isn't rusted tight, the tool works brilliantly and takes no more than 5 mins to remove, the same for installation. Key is to make sure the bearing and thread are lubricated with grease and how fast you can work a ratchet
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