Did my radius rod bushings yesterday. Definitely took more than the one hour mentioned in the FAQ.

I noticed before starting, that the rear bushing seemed terribly skewed - the bolt of course was parallel to the ground, but the rod was twisted such that the outside sleeve of the bushing was on an angle. I wondered later if this could have been caused by over-tightening the front bolt, but I would have thought that the bushings would still be loose enough in the control arm to allow the rod to settle back to its normal position.

Driver's side came off easily. With the rear bushing bolt out and front bolt out, I could slide the rod back and down enough to slide it right out. The two cone bushings at the front were pretty much frozen in place though. I tried hammering with a punch through the rod shaft hole, to push each out the other side, with no luck. Finally, I put the rod back in half way from the back, so it was through the rear cone bushing only, and cranked it hard to loosen the bushing from its seat. Then I was able to hammer the front one out with a punch.

I wasn't sure what to make of what was left. The seats where the bushings were, had some rubber left, which was expected, but they also looked severely rusted. I thought at first it must have been metal from under the rubber cone, but wondered after working on it a bit if it wasn't a rusted control arm.

I proceeded to do the passenger's side to compare. Here, I had a hell of a time even getting the radius rod out. Tapping on the loosened front bolt to push it back, the rod hit up against a stib fitting that's part of the radius rod rear bushing chassis mount. Anyone know what this is for? It doesn't exist on the driver's side.

Anyway, this stud prevented me from getting the rod out. Since the rod was still extending well into the collar of the front cone bushing at this point, it was not possible to torque the rod enough to break both bushings from their seats. Finally I gouged out the front cone bushing enough to get vice grips onto it's inner remaining collar, and was able to eventually pry the collar out. Then I could pry out the rear cone bushing using the rod, as expected.

The cone bushing seats in the passenger side control arm were the same. After a lot of hammering with a pick and chisel, I was finally able to get down to the original control arm surface for the front and back cone bushing. What a PITA. Repeated on the driver's side, and everything went back together fine. I did notice that the centre sleeve on the rear bushing on the driver's side seemed to have separated from the rubber. The collar hadn't slipped left-right though, so it may still be fused away from the outside edges. Maybe its previous skewed orientation caused this.

Finishing off, I had a hard time getting enough torque on the rear bushing bolts from under the car while it was on ramps, so I eventually resorted to mutliple extensions, and did these standing beside the car.

All ended well, but certainly not in an hour. (Too embarrassed to say how long). Probably on about half the jobs I do, doing my own repairs is cost-effective (along with the fact that I enjoy the challenge), but if I ever did the math on all the jobs - what I'm saving vs. how long it takes me - I'd have to give up this hobby!

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David Armstrong - '86 240(350k km?), '93 940T(270k km), '89 240(parts source for others) near Toronto