Refitting bushes or fitting an elephant into a Mini........

[Snow Mole]

Well, finally drilled, cut and sawed out the A-frame bushes on my 400SE - 5 drill bits,3 hacksaw blades later and I'm ready to fit the new Poly bushes. They are as hard as hell and seem nearly impossible to fit in the frame.They are the correct ones as I checked with Richard at RT when I bought them - so has anyone any idea how to get them to fit, apart from the anglegrinder!
This is probably one of the hardest and most time consuming job that I've ever done on the car, so lets hope that they last for a few years.

Its probably easier to get the elephant into a Mini!!

Rick

[dexy]

well they should go in ,if you start the new bushes off into where the old bushes came out then put the whole lot in a vice and tighten you should be able then to take the new bushes all the way in the old hole ,dont forget to make sure the hole is clean and put a bit of grease in ..
cheers
neil

[GreenV8S]

If you deep freeze the bushes, do they shrink?

[dexy]

GreenV8S said:

If you deep freeze the bushes, do they shrink?

Dont know about that ,they should be able to withstand a certain temp how low i dont know ,will try i when i do the front end of the car
neil

[Snow Mole]

The bushes are a solid poly material - I can them in the Deep Freeze, but wouldn't hold out much hope of them shrinking.

Rick

[GreenV8S]

Sometimes interference metal parts can be fitted just by heating/cooling, I thought maybe the same might apply to these bushes, if they *almost* fit. The other possibility is that by heating them (within reason) you might soften them and make it easier to squish them into place. Failing that, if they almost fit it might just be a case of making sure the fitting has a slight lead on it and then apply brute force.

[Snow Mole]

Will post and update tomorrow after applying some brute force using grease, sweat and a vice.....

Rick

[number 7]

Don't remember having trouble getting the bushes fitted, but I did have extreme difficulty getting the re-bushed A frames back into the chassis, and similarly re-fitting the damper side of the frame against the hub carrier. Polybushes obviously don't have that slighly degree of flexibility that rubber does. In the end I had to trim the poly back fractionally to get them to fit, whilst using lots of grease and a plastic mallet.

7.

[jchase]

If the bushes are the solid white nylon ones, you will need to cook them for a few hours at a moderate heat to get the water out - Nylon can absorb 10% by weight of water and swell up. Nylon goes a bit brown when the water is removed, but goes white again about a week later. This doesn't apply to PolyUrethane.

Also, as a good friend of mine stated you will need to align bore the centres of the hard nylon ones after the A frames have been adjusted, or the skew of the inboard centre lines may cause the A arm to lock. I personally didn;t think it would be an issue, but I haven't actually tried it.

I'm putting my bushes in this week too! But my Nylon ones haven't showed up so I'm gonna have to fit Polys, as I have to move my car this week.

-Jim

[adam quantrill]

Poly's just press in with a vice, but you need a nice big one (vice, that is) (I mean the tool). Don't forget to have the central metal part in the bush before you press it in. I also used plenty of copaslip on it all.

After putting Poly's on the suspension is much harder to reassemble because there is less play. I dunno about A frame, but on trailing arm you have to put on the bottom link last.

[wedg1e]

jchase said:

Also, as a good friend of mine stated you will need to align bore the centres of the hard nylon ones after the A frames have been adjusted, or the skew of the inboard centre lines may cause the A arm to lock. I personally didn;t think it would be an issue, but I haven't actually tried it. -Jim

That would potentially be true if the arm/ bushes actually pivoted on the mounting bolt, but as with most suspensions they don't. When you bolt up the chassis mounting, it locks the steel core of the bush to the chassis. The arm moves by deforming the rubber (or polyurethane) - and this is why manuals always syate that the suspension bolts should be tightened with the weight of the car on its wheels (otherwise you're deforming the bush before you even get in the car). It's always seemed like a bloody stupid idea to me; allegedly suspension designers allow for the flex of these bushes in their 'calculations' but I have my doubts... surely a rose-joint or similar pivot would be better, leaving just the more-or-less known quantities of spring and shock to do thir thing...

[350matt]

try some washing up liquid as lubricant, grease is no good as it make the rubber sticky

Matt

[anonymous-user]

Im doing this job soon. Most of the thread relates to getting the new poly bush in, which has the same theme... How about getting the old rubber one out, I heard that a good way was to heat it up with a blow torch then push the bush out, rather than cutting with a hacksaw? Anyone got any good methods on getting the old one out??

Doug

[Snow Mole]

Job done

Plenty of grease, one big vice, and a 4ft length of scaffold pipe to get some extra leverage!!

Getting centre of the bush aligned with the frame is a little tricky but worth it in the end.

This rebuild must be getting easier - the joy of Wedge ownership is depressing sometimes....

Doug - I followed the instructions in Steve heaths bible -

1. Drill out the rubber using a 4mm drill bit (or bits as you get through quite a few)
2. Remove the centre metal spacer
3. Use a hacksaw (not a junior one) to cut through the outer metal bush and then tap it through using a screwdriver
4. If it doesn't move, saw another cut about 10mm away from the first cut and then tap out the section and the rest will follow.

It does take some time, about 5 hours to remove 4 on each A-Frame and 2 on each tie rod and then 3 hours to press in the new bushes.
I understand that it transforms the handling of the car - lets hope so.

Now just how to fit an Elephant into a Mini

Rick

>> Edited by Snow Mole on Monday 12th December 21:18

[jchase]

Hi Wedg1e,

All I can offer is the explanation my (very clever mechanical engineer) friend said - he was talking about rigid bearings, such as Nylon, or bronze on steel cylinders specifically for the TVR Tasmin 'A' frame rear...

"[Look again at the two inner pivots, and what happens as you adjust the inner pivot length - the inner pivots are no longer coaxial, parallel maybe but not coaxial. This means that the A arm is constrained, because there is resultant torque between the two centres of motion. Metalastic bushes overcome this by the cores twisting a little, and the bracket mounts eventually finding a state of self-stress to allow this to occur. On solid bushes the A frame would have to be bent to get the rotation centrelines to line up so it will probably be very prone to lock-up.]"

..or something like that..

It sort of makes sense to me, so I at least plan to check the movement of the Arms on mine before final assembly of the hubs and wot-not. It may turn out the chassis just twists enough for it to not be a problem at all

P.S. The Super flex website says to insert the stainless tubes AFTER the bushes are installed. As does the Wedge Bible pp164 - I want to do this tommorrow - anyone tried the other method, before I trash some expensive Poly.

-Jim

[adam quantrill]

Jim - when I did the first poly bush on mine, I forgot the insert. It wouldn't go in (the hole having been compressed). Luckily I could push out the bush again undamaged and stick in the insert.

Doing it the other way seems crazy, unless they are a very loose fit with the bushes off the car.

[Snow Mole]

Jim

There's no way you could get the centre bush in after pushing the poly bush in. I wouldn't risk it - if you can get the bushes in complete then do it that way.

Just think that once the jobs been done, then its not to do again for a few years!!

[jchase]

But er the bush is two top hats with a pin, you have to push at least one of them in ??

[Snow Mole]

The bushes on my A-Frame where one piece items with a central stainless bush - not the split items.
Rick