I remember those words from Sloth when we were trying to get the old Poly bushes out of my radius arms back at the last summer camp. At some point in the past, my car had been fitted with Orange poly bushes which had survived pretty well I must admit. They put up a real fight trying to get them out of the radius arms, we couldn't press them out, cut them out or drill through them hence Sloth asking if there was a blowlamp in the workshop so we could burn them out. As it happened there wasn't so we had to continue with brute force and ignorance. When they were eventually out, we found that moisture had got between the bush and radius arm so the hole in the arm that we intended pressing a new, OE rubber, bush into, was covered in rust scale. I spent ages with a hammer and punch knocking the scale out to clean up the hole for the new bushes.

Although it hadn't felt bad before it felt much better with the correct bushes in, so a good job done. Just recently I noticed that the rear panhard rod also had orange poly bushes in it and they weren't looking too good. I'd also noticed the odd random clunk from the back end at times too so decided to do those.

The end that attaches to the chassis was badly worn with a good 5mm of side to side slop in the centre steel bush. That fell out and the poly bit eventually came out after lots of prising with a big screwdriver. Inside was, again, well rusted so needed a lot of work to clean it up enough for it to be possible to push the new rubber bush in. However, the axle end hadn't really worn at all. Tried pressing the steel centre out and it didn't want to know. The poly is so flexible that it just springs back to how it was when pressure is taken off. Tried cutting the outer lip off so the whole thing could be pushed out. Same problem and it was at this point I remembered Sloth's words and picked up a blowlamp. He was right, it can't fight back when it's a liquid but even that wasn't simple. Heat the poly up and it goes black, bubbles a bit but doesn't quite reach the liquid stage and had to be dug out a bit at a time with a screwdriver. Once out, I had to spend even longer cleaning up the hole as it now had melted poly in it as well as rust scale. Pressed the new bushed in and fitted it back to the car.

What surprised me was how much difference two seemingly insignificant bushes make. With the sort of mileages I do I want my car to feel 'tight', no slop or play in anything and it had, but now it feels even better. So yet another reason why poly bushes are a bad idea.