The control arm bushings on my car are cracked up on the parts of them that are not inside the control arm. Are there any driving symptoms that indicate if they have gone bad? How hard are they to replace? Do you have to remove the torsion bars to do so? It drove fine until my dad ran through a pothole with it, know it acts strange.

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82 D150-225/727
02 Dakota-3.9/5 speed
87 GMC C7000-8.2 Detroit Diesel/5+2

You will have to remove the control arms (and torsion bars, and at the minimum the spindle) and have a machine shop press out and press in new bushings. You can take the old ones out yourself though. When I did mine, I used a torch to burn the rubber out, and a chisel and punch to get the outer shell out of the lower control arm, and a dremel to cut the inner shell off the control arm shaft. Its alot of work, but saves the machinest the time and you the extra charges (the guy wanted to charge me an extra $20...per side just to take out the outer shell!) This way all that has to be done is press the control arm bushing in and press the control arm shaft in. Have you got a shop manual yet? It will out line step by step the process so you know what you have to do and what is involved.

A word of warning....
If you don't leave the car with the machine shop, make sure you take good measurements of the distance between the flanges that the bushings are bolted through. I'm talking about the overall total distance. My wheel and alignment shop didn't press the new bushings in quite enough, and I had to take them back for a little extra push. I still had to crank and pry on them pretty good to wedge the upper control arms back into the mounts. It was a bear

Jerry

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There's a difference between ignorance and stupidity.
Ignorance is not knowing any better.
Stupidity is knowing, yet doing it anyway.

...I'm sure glad no one has mentioned the "P"-word...

D/W

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If it ain't broke, fix it!

hi dennis, ...the good "p" word is ...poly or is it polyurethane !! so what's the bad "p" word? ha,ha ron . p.s. are you going to carlisle?

...Someone had to say it. Poly wanna cracker?? SKWAAAAK!!! (how about a squeak or a pop?)

D/W

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If it ain't broke, fix it!

Then would come the great debate of which is better, *swack*...er...poly vs. rubber...or whether poly everything but going rubber on the lower control arms is the good thing... or going all poly, then bugging Doc for one of his Dutra Disk experimental setups to keep things 'jake'....


I'm still running rubber, but changing the bushings every 2-3 years is nuts since our roads are in dire need of repair in most metropolitan areas.... of course, pounding the crap out of my 30 years old A-body might not be a good thing either...

Thanks Dennis


-D.Idiot