Bushing Overhaul, Chapter 1

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C6H12O6

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This is the first of what will be several threads on the different phases of a complete replacement of my severely worn OEM rubber suspension bushings with new Whiteline polyurethane bushings. Apologies in advance for the length, but I've been searching for months and most of the threads about replacing bushings end with somebody saying they are going to do it, or have already done it, then nothing.

To make a very long story a little shorter, after an accident a couple years ago, my '95 80 received a brand new steering gearbox with the new-style sector shaft, new drag link, new Slee tie rod and relay rod, new tie rod ends, rebuilt PS pump, new PS hoses, full front axle service with new wheel bearings and trunion bearings, and new OME Nitrocharger Sport shocks. After each of these, the steering feel and handling improved, but things have started to go down hill in a hurry lately.

I was experiencing a lot of wandering, particularly on worn/grooved roads. On turns at speed, I had a lot of understeer – it almost felt as if the axles were shifting under the truck as you tried to turn. The truck would just keep pushing straight most of the way through the turn, so you had to keep turning and turning, until... oversteer. Part-way through the curve, the steering would catch up and almost dive into the corner. I found it hard to believe that the poor steering response and handling characteristics were due to any problem with the hard parts that were just replaced, so I crawled underneath to inspect things. At 218,000 miles, you could clearly see the rear lower control arm bushings were shot.
 
These were the best pics of the bushings before I pulled the arms. Tough to get a good angle on them when they are on the truck, but they were all in about the same shape.
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Once I pulled the arms, this was pretty typical. I took pictures of most of the bushings, but all the pictures looked about like these. Any flexing of the bushing revealed large, deep tears in the rubber.
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To the hydraulic press! My friend Aaron let me use his shop to do the work. The Harbor Freight 20-ton hydraulic press got the job done, but I don't think much less would have. The trickiest part was finding something the right size to press against on the base of the press and the right size on top to just push the bushing out. The cast plates the HF press comes with were a PITA, as the eyelet on the arm kept wanting to slide off. Not good when you have thousands of pounds of force pushing down.

We did the rear lower control arms first. I ended up using the 36 mm socket out of the 3/4" HF impact socket set. The 36 mm socket was just barely too small, so it didn't really want to stay straight. The inner diameter of the LCA eyelet is about 55.3 mm. The 38 mm socket in the kit was just a bit over at 56 mm outer diameter, so my buddy took it to his belt sander to shave it down a bit to about 55.1 mm. After a few trial & error presses that got the shaved-down 38 mm socket stuck inside the LCA eyelet, I ended up using the modified 38 mm socket to just pop the bushing down into the eyelet, then switched to the smaller 36 mm socket, which pushed through without any drag. Worked great.

Pushing the new Whiteline bushings in was a little tougher. And easier. The poly center of the Whiteline bushings are so much beefier that the socket used to press the old bushing out wouldn't fit over the new bushing and kept slipping off. I finally decided to put the Whiteline claims that the polyurethane bushing material and the metal outer sleeve are bonded together to the test and just pressed the new bushings in by pressing with a flat piece of steel in between the bushing and the press. Don't insert the inner metal sleeve until after you press the bushing into the arm. Once installation is complete, lube the inside of the new bushing with the supplied grease and the inner sleeves slide right in. More grease around the outside of the bushing and you're ready to re-install.
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The upper control arms have smaller eyelets and the 32 mm socket (pictured) from the HF 3/4" impact socket set made short work of them. Again, having a stable base was the key to getting the press to push the bushings out nice and straight. In this picture, I used a steel plate with the correct size hole to press against. After messing with the funky cast plates for the LCAs, if you have the tools and some scrap plate steel, drilling the correct size holes so the bushing just passes through would make much faster work. Kind of tough to get it to line up correctly, but once I had the UCA lined up correctly on the first one, I marked the plate with a Sharpie so I could easily line up the others.
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Needing to do this

Will you be in a position to drive between each set of bushings so you can let us know where you notice improvement? Very interested in doing this too.
:popcorn:
 
No job would be complete without a couple problems. Here was the first - a bent upper control arm. Probably not a huge deal, but the weird thing is I have no idea how it happened. There is a rusted scrape in the side of the arm, but no real evidence of a big impact.
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Problem #2: Toyota says you should not re-use any of the nuts/bolts to hold these on. Being a cheap SOB by nature, I didn't listen. As I was torquing down the bolts (after you lower the truck back to the ground) a couple of the bolts never seemed to get tight. The torque specs are as follows:

UCA bolts - 130 ft. lbs.
LCA bolts - 130 ft. lbs.
Rear Panhard Bar to frame - 130 ft. lbs.
Rear Panhard Bar to frame - 180 ft. lbs.

Most of them torqued up fine and clicked my wrench at 130 ft. lbs. Some did not. They just kept going and going. I stopped before any problems when they got tight feeling, but I'll be replacing those bolts very soon. The only one that was a real problem was the right side rear bolt on the UCA. I didn't have much room to move the torque wrench and could only get one or two ratchet clicks on at a time. I didn't notice how much I was turning it and it never clicked the torque wrench and never felt tight. I finally stopped to check it when I heard a crackling noise and the mount on the rear axle the UCA end sits in had bent under the strain. No good and not sure how to fix that. I'll post that up in another thread to keep this focused on the install. Not sure how to fix that one. Take home message here is to replace the nuts and bolts when you do this job.
 
Here are the Whiteline part numbers for this job:
R Panhard rod - bush W81701
R Trailing arm (LCA) - lower W61700
R Trailing arm (UCA) - upper W61699

I'm doing this in phases, so I'm going to drive on these for a while and see how it feels. I hate the threads where people replace dozens of parts and attribute the improvements to one element, so I'm going to attempt a somewhat scientific approach to these upgrades. First phase was the rear bushings that place the axle. Next will be the front bushings. New sway bar bushings F/R will follow. Possibly even new sway bars in the future.

Initial drive test for the three miles home before everything was torqued down all the way was amazing. I'll have a better idea over the next few days and I'll post up my impressions. My goals here are better, more predictable handling on-road. I don't wheel that much and I understand that the stiffer poly bushings might limit my flex a little bit, but my main focus is the 99% of driving I do on the road. Whiteline claims to be much softer than traditional hard/noisy/harsh polyurethane bushings, having a durometer that isn't much higher than the OEM rubber bushings. We'll see. So far, I'm very impressed.
 
Myself and some buddies used the 12 Ton HF press to do the front control arm bushings and it was barely enough. Nice pics of the work.
 
Myself and some buddies used the 12 Ton HF press to do the front control arm bushings and it was barely enough. Nice pics of the work.

My friend had to use a 60 ton press to get mine out/in.
 
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Which poly bushings did you use?

I had Slee blue poly bushings in all the lower arms. I went back to OEM rubber and replaced the front axle mounts with the 3 degree black caster correction bushings.
I also replaced the rear upper control arms and the front and rear panhard bushings. All with OEM.
Truck is quieter and drives a whole lot better. I'm going to replace my shock bushings with OEM as well. I'm getting rid of all poly bushings.
 
Interesting. I'm not sure what the durometer rating was on the blue poly bushings Slee sold, but I would guess they were typical urethane bushings pushing 100 on the durometer (hardness) scale. Whiteline claims their bushings are a whole other animal from the traditional urethane bushings. They are in the 70-80 range on the durometer scale, according to their catalog, which puts them right in line with the rubber used to make automotive tires. I don't know how hard the OEM bushings were, so tough to compare without those numbers.

We'll see how they hold up. So far, I absolutely love them. The ride is firm, but not harsh at all. No squeaks yet, and the truck sits noticeably higher now that everything is centered up and resting where it should. I buggered up one of the bolts on the right upper control arm in the rear, so I'll need to take a look at that, but so far, I really like the way they ride. Can't wait to get the fronts finished.
 
can you link where you got these bushings? I have been collecting oem bushings but would love to get a hold of a set.
 
Well, I've driven on the new rear bushings for a couple weeks now and I'm prepared to say that these new bushings are amazing. Acknowledging that I am comparing them to worn-out OEM bushings and not new OEM bushings, the difference is incredible. Would I notice as much improvement over new OEM bushings? Impossible to really tell unless somebody wants to send me a new set of OEM bushings. I'll gladly try it out and report back. However... I am completely happy with these Whiteline bushings. No noises whatsoever, the rear end tracks straight as an arrow, and the steering response is almost completely predictable.

Read the top post, but I was having some serious understeer problems before. You would go into a curve and it was as if the axles wanted to just keep going straight. You could seriously feel the axles drifting around underneath you, then part-way through the curve, everything would firm up and you would turn. Not really understeer exactly, but pretty much the same effect. The worst was on mountain roads that had any kind of left-right-left nature to them. It was scary to feel everything moving around unpredictably. That has been nearly completely handled with the rear bushings. I can still feel the front moving around a bit, and I'll tackle them next, but it is so good already, I'm not in a huge hurry.

I also want to get the sway bar ends done. That was the only thing not done on the rear and they are in pretty sad shape. I still have a little bit too much body lean in corners, but I think that is mostly just worn sway bars/bushings and a lifted 80. At least it is somewhat predictable. I did leave one of the sway bar end-link bolts loose and had a couple days of trying to figure out what the clacking noise was, but now that it is all tightened up, it still sways a little too much for my liking. The sway bars will likely be phase three. Next up: front bushings.
 
SuperPro Polyurethane Bushings made by Fulcrum Australia (and manufactured in AU not in China) will provide you with the best solution for your vehicle. Backed by over 30 years of experiance in the auto industry, a full time R & D team and world wide distribution SuperPro manufactured the best polyurethane bushings.

For the rear sway bar ends we offer kit # SPF0280K

For the front Radius Arm To - Diff Mount Bushing. we offer three different kit:
SPF0396K - 4 Bushings,4 Inner Tubes
SPF1721K - Radius Arm To - Diff Mount - Eccentric Kit. Offset centre hole to increase caster settings
SPF1721XK - Radius Arm To - Diff Mount - Eccentric Kit for extra offset "High Lift Vehicles" To increase caster settings.

SuperPro offer addtional bushings for the front. I can email you the who list if you are interested.
 

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