EO2K came by today and we swapped the bushings in my control arms.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1400392749

No chance of bending the control arm this way. It's a 1.5" diameter pipe nipple with a stack of(4) fender washers on the pipe nipple side and some regular washers on the bushing side. With my harbor freight electric impact wrench it took 20 seconds or less to push out each bushing once the tool was set up. We found that spraying a little kroil under the lip of the rubber bushing helped them to come out easier.

Honestly this was an easy job to do this way and not being afraid of bending the control arms is a win!

I used the harbor freight ball joint tool and a ratchet with no vice and was able to remove all of my bushings, including the NB steering rack. I also used a 3-jaw puller (from the HF four three jaw puller set), two of the HF ball joint tool pieces, and a ratchet to remove the OEM diff bushings, and to remove poly bushings. Worked great.

I would've never believed that it was that easy.
No power tools, less than 5 minutes per bushing. Although, it'd prolly be better to use a sleeve and just thread the rod through only 1 bushing at a time.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1405460998
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1405460998

What washer is that? I bent the shit out of the washers I used.

Oh. That.
That's the one I used when we aligned my car at your place, don't you remember? (Perhaps not, 'cause you share like a miser!)

Seriously, dude, do you sit at the computer all day? You've just joined both this and m.net, and already you have some 5,000+ posts. What do you do?

one learn something new everyday... I usually use a circular saw and a drill, cut through the rubber like butter, then wire brush the residuals.

Thanks for the share!

Nice! Very helpful!

I'm considering doing this with the I.L. stiffer rubber bushings. However, I would like to powder coat the control arms before installing the new bushings.

The autozone by me loans out the harbor freight style C-tool for a $120 deposit. (maybe less).

It is weird because they gave me $20 in bonus bucks for the deposit even though I got that money back when I returned the tool. So, they paid me $20 to borrow it. What a deal.

Same idea as gesso, plastic pipe worked for me, although I was sort of staying out of the line of fire if it broke. Nice thing about plastic pipe is that you don't have to extract the old bushings, and they did get stuck. You can just toss the bushing and piece of pipe in the trash.


https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1456376191

Just did mine with a 2 jaw puller from Autozone. No fire. No wd40. No hub pulling. Super easy.

I'm hoping it shouldn't be too difficult to swap out 19 year old original bushings for the new IL Motosports rubber bushings using this tool at home.

I used a couple of 3 jaw pullers from HF. No drama, no fire needed. One of the pullers lasted about 3/4 of the job before the threads seized, so plan on tossing it . Buy the kit so you have two. Used threaded rod and washers to pull the steel liner into the bush on the rear upper outer (top of the knuckle). On the rear did one arm at a time, so didn’t have to remove the knuckle or the axle shaft at all. A regular c clamp, or a big pair of channel locks, to push the steel bushings in the rest with the arm in the bench vice.

Thanks for this tip! Haven’t seen this before ever so that’s pretty cool thought I was gonna have to take my arms to a shop to get them out :)

A bearing puller works great too!