RX300 Superpro Bushes Arrived.

[Delphius1]

The Superpro Polyurethane bushes arrived this week. They look pretty chunky:

Looking at the instructions, they need pressing into the arms with a hydraulic press. Certainly the rear ones with the steel ring will need to be pressed in and the instructions show the front ones being pressed over the mounting pins as well. Both kits come with sachets of grease which is a nice touch and will help installation.

In other news I have braided Oil cooler hose arriving today so I can bypass all the transmission oil pipes. I fitted a temporary hose to bypass the leaking pipe, which took an hour to fit thanks to the lack of space. I have 10 litres of transmission fluid so I can do a flush of the auto box at the same time as bypassing the metal pipes.  The hoses I can hopefully do this weekend.

 

[BachelorDays]

Quite an agenda!  I once bypassed a vacuum pipe on an MB with a 'temporary' hose.  Never got around to changing it and never had another issue.  I suppose you don't have the same luxury given all the heat running through your bypass.  It's obvious you know your stuff.  Just wondering how easy it is to ensure these pipes are secured against  vibration and movement?

When's the suspension work?  You have the tools or get these pressed at a shop?

[Delphius1]

Did the all the hoses finally this last weekend. I made sure it was proper oil cooler hose and they can be routed so they don't rub against anything. The bad news is it took 3 hours to do them in total, the majority of the time was taken trying to get the old hose clips off because there was no space to get pliers in there. In the end I used a small set of snipe nosed pliers and a lot of skinned knuckles to free the old hoses.

The original hoses are 10mm, which is not easy to get. I did have some 3/8 (9.7mm) oil cooler hose from ages ago, but it wouldn't slide over the hose fittings on the RX properly no matter what I did.  I ended up ordering 7/16 (11mm) braided hose off eBay and 1m of hose is enough to replace the two hoses to the oil cooler.

I plan to have a couple of days off work this week so I should be able to do a transmission fluid flush while I'm off.

I know a bit about cars. When it comes to mechaniking I'm a talented amateur. :-)  I'm not sure when I'll get time to fit the bushes. What I do know is that I'll unbolt the bottom ball joints from the arms rather than split the ball joints as that means there's less chance of damaging the ball joint dust boot.

I don't have level ground at home to do the work, so I might have to pay someone to do it for me. There's a friendly garage next to work that we use from time to time that may be able to do the work. We do have a press that should do the job at work if I could get the arms off, but I think the suspension work may be beyond a lunchtime session in the works car park. :-)

 

[BachelorDays]

That sounds great!  Stuck clips, jammed joints.. time estimates don't mean much.  The most annoying is when it's the last one that refuses to budge.  But main thing is that the job is done.  Hadn't realised the hoses are tucked in that well - I thought you might need to clamp them as well.

[Delphius1]

You do need to use hose clips to secure the hoses, but using jubilee clips allows you to get a driver in from the side, above or below to tighten them which is easier than using the old spring clips which are definitely attached before assembly.

I did the trans flush this week. It took 9 litres of fluid to do. The gear changes have smoothed out since the change, but not as dramatically as some of the how-toos online suggest.

On to the next job ....