Clive603 wrote:

Fortunately there is just enough room to get between the radius arm and the mounting to cut through the centre bush and bolt. Still leaves you with a thin "washer" holding the bolt head end on so the head end has to be bashed out.

Clive

IIRC this isn't the case if you have the polybushes. The bush is a different shape and extends past the metal of the radius arm - filling the space between the arm and the bracket. We had to cut the head off the bolt on Richard's car.

The one I crushed was a Bearmach branded one with white plastic outer. The other three torqued up absolutely fine so at this point I'm happy to put it down to defect in that particular bush rather than an issue with the design/material selection.

Bearmach sent me two new ones which I hope to install soon. If one or both of those fail I might revise my opinion of them :P

Welcome :)

Given the issues we had with the orange polybushes I'd maybe suggest leaving them there until they fail! Rubber bushes might be a better ride etc but the polybushes seem to be a right PITA to remove and leave the holes in the arms pretty much unusable due to corrosion. If the polybushes are still serviceable I'd make the most of them before facing the headache of replacing them.

If your polybushes are shot and in need of replacement I'd try to get hold of a spare set of arms, put the new bushes in those and fit them.

Cheers - PM sent :)

We didn't seem to have a problem holding things straight by hand at Marty's. They all seemed to go in well enough.

Only need to re-do mine as one of the tubes in the middle of the bush crushed when torqueing the mounting bolts up :(

They've sent me two new ones under warranty though :)

Does anyone know the dimensions of the bush tool?

IE:

Size of the entry end, size of the exit end, length/depth and how far down the taper starts?

A friend of mine just got big new lathe and we're thinking of having a go at making one/some.

Sloth wrote:

The only time I've used polybushes (or a variation thereof) was on my E39. The rear trailing arms have pressed bushes that aren't (or weren't, it has been a while) available separately, and the arms costs somewhere in the region of £500. EACH.

A friend of mine has an E92 320D that needs new bushes for some of the arms in his suspension. I hope for his sake that either the arms are cheaper or the bushes are available!

I think the blame lies with Imgur to be honest.

Back when Photobucket was the place to host images linking them to the forum was easy. They have you a variety of different links for different purposes. They then decided they no longer wanted any users so changed how their service worked.

Imgur seem to make it harder than strictly necessary to get the correct link. I assume it's better for them to have people going to their website rather than allowing you to show the images they're hosting on your own website.

Ah, got it.

Morat wrote:

Amateurs! lol

There was at least one polybush still in an arm when I left if you wanted to show us how it's done :P

The polybush was so seized, stretchy and tough that it managed to bend one of Marty's press tools. The tool bent, pinched around part of the polybush and was difficult to remove.

I wonder if the increased amount of retained moisture contributed to the bolt seizing inside the sleeve?

I wasn't paying enough attention to which arm was which when they came off as they got passed around for various attempts at bush removal and rust removal.

Was the one with the seized bolt also the most rusty bush hole?

Mine is much better. It recently started throwing itself all over the road when hitting bumps on dual carriageways and making the steering wheel wobble more and more. That's now gone. It also started to kind of "lurch" when going in to bend on country roads. That's gone too

I also did ARB bushes and drop links.

Not sure how long it will last though - one of the sleeves in the middle of my new bushes crushed when being torqued up. I reckon that will need replacing soon.

Following a bit of a mishap with the replacement of my heater o rings my sensor was disturbed.

It now seems to be working! Not sure why but current thinking is either a loose connection or some coolant contact from the o rings.

Might be worth giving the electrical connector a wiggle before assuming the sensor is dead.

That was very nice of her!

I can sort tea and coffee in the morning. Might even splash out on a few packets of biscuits :P

Anyone at the Premier Inn tonight?

I have a big jack, 4 axle stands (2x 2T and 2x 3T), a full tool box, a mains powered impact gun, air impact gun (if there's air available), two bottles of oil, a bottle of coolant, a set of trim panel removal tools, a set of hose clamp tools, a box full of spare nuts and bolts, a foam pad to lay down on and a small stool thing on wheels.

Only thing I'm not sure about is lunch. Bring sandwiches with us?

For the location, if you put the post code in to Google Maps it's apparently the cluster of buildings above the marker with the label for the riding club.

When I did mine the bolts came right off, no problems there.

With a smaller condenser do you need to reduce the amount of refrigerant in the system to avoid over-pressuring it?

Hope it warms up! 0 degrees and hail stones for me today...

Yeah, I'm only there Saturday booked the Premier Inn for Friday.

I think it's best to focus on the bushes for my car tbh. Will be pushed for time to do much else.

I've got a set of blend motors waiting to make their way inside the dashboard too if you want to get away from the underneath work :P