Hi Alex,

Your red circled area is the control arm and looks perfectly normal. The control arm bushing surface looks fine, although I see some residual pitting that suggests it was either a bit rusty before you cleaned it up or was a rough casting. Normally you just brush off the brown dirt and any scale or residual rubber and you're good to go. You don't polish it up or lube it as it needs to grip into the rubber ridges. I normally just use a cup wire wheel in a drill and give the front and back of the eye a quick clean. Good to have it reasonably smooth just as you've done, but once it's torqued down there's no movement at the surface except for flexing at the outer edge, so a little uneveness on the surface doesn't matter.

It's often a bit difficult to get the nut started on the outer bushing if there's not enough thread sticking out. With the rear cone bushing in place, have the control arm stay rod (aka. radius rod) loosely mounted at the chassis to keep things in alignment for doing the front bushing. With the cup washer removed there should now be enough thread sticking out to get the nut started and compress it a bit so you can then properly get the cup washer and nut on.

If needed, you can disconnect the stay rod at the rear bushing and tension it straight forward into the control arm to try getting a little extra thread. Use whatever it takes to pry it forward a bit. Problem with doing this is getting the rear bolt through once you're done. Poke a tapered punch through the hole from the left to pry the rod back to get the holes aligned and be able to start the bolt from the other end.

If there's still not enough thread to do this then I'm wondering if you have an incorrect bushing. You could try doing a dry run without the stay rod in place. Use a C-clamp to compress the bushings together then use a caliper to measure the outer distance to see if there's ever going to be enough thread sticking out. If not then you've got a fitment issue

Which conical bushings did you get? There are two ones that are slightly different. The story should go something like this, but I'm relying on memory and multiple sources, only some of which are Volvo.

There was an updated shorter control arm stay rod with an updated bushing designed to reduce brake vibration. In the early models these may have been updated in the field based on customer complaints. In the later models, I believe the updated stays were standard, as with both my '95 940s. If you use a North American parts site, your 1997 940 may not be listed to know what was standard issue in Europe.

Measure the control stay rod from the centre of the rear bushing to the tip of the thread. The updated control stay is 388.5mm long and uses updated conical bushing p/n 6819057 (which superseded factory p/n 8628965). Both the steel and aluminum control arms (used in a few later 900s) use the same updated bushing.

The original control stays were normally 390.5mm long and used the original conical bushing p/n 1359599 (which superseded factory p/ns 1229297, 1229299, 1272837). There was a 396mm stay for use with 16" wheels and a 385mm one for use with 14" wheels. Both used the original conical bushing.

It looks like the 6819057 bushings may have a longer steel core in the middle and may not fit the original controls arms or at least may be a more difficult fit.
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Dave -still with 940's, prev 740/240/140/120 You'd think I'd have learned by now