RX300 -Superpro Bushes Fitting and results

[Delphius1]

Well, my tame mechanic finally got to grips with the RX and the job of changing the bushes on the front lower arms.

The first thing I would say is the job is not an easy DIY one and not for the faint of heart. My mechanic said things were as close to disaster as he like to go a few times. He was not a happy bunny! His description of the work included lots of Anglo-Saxon words which when interpreted, his conclusion is it was a pig of a job even having workshop facilities.

The first point is that on the nearside, there is no way to separate the engine/transmission mount from the end of the gearbox, so even undoing all the nuts and bolts on the mount means the engine and gearbox have to be raised substantially and the subframe has to be lowered to get enough clearance to remove the mount and get access to the bolts for the front bushing for the arm.

He said the engine and gearbox were jacked up as far as he dare go and the subframe bolts were on their last millimetre or two of thread and he just and only just was able to remove the mount. It took 2.5 hours to remove the first arm.

With the mount out of the way and the arm finally removed from the car, his 10-ton press could not push the old bushes out of the arm. The rear bush required a 40-ton press to push it out of the arm. The front bush needed some hacksawing and drilling of the rubber to separate the butterfly pin from the bush and the arm.

Fitting the Superpro bushes was a bit easier and of course putting everything back together was a little better than removing them.

So in conclusion, the job isn't easy and really isn't something you can do at the side of the road. If you fit replacement arms and don't try and be clever and fit polyurethane bushes, it'll be half the hassle.

But getting to the front bush mounts to remove the arm is a real pain. The mechanic was disputing the parentage of whoever designed the car to have the engine mounts right over the bush mounts. :-)

Anyway, after the bushes have been fitted, I can report the car handles so much better.  The rear bushes on the arms were so shot you could see daylight through them, so even new rubber bushes would have dramatically changed the handling for the better. The steering is flatter where before it had a tendency for the outer corner to tuck in and dip a bit in corners. Steering is now quicker and I don't get that lag from turning the steering wheel to the car actually doing the turning.

As for the bushes themselves I can report even having stiffer bushes there is no extra noise in the cabin or anything detrimental at all.

 

 

 

 

 

[The-Acre]

I went through something similar three weeks ago with the mechanic telling me the hardest part was pressing out the old bushes, something he said the average person wouldn't be able to do.  A different design though with the bush housing being easy to remove. I'm glad you notice a difference now!

 

[BachelorDays]

The mount has to be removed to access the bolts for the arm?!  Wow. 

Googled it and just saw a youtube video about it.  It's in Spanish (I think) but the pictures tell all.  The mount literally covers the arm bolt like a cup.  

Not that it matters much in the scheme of things, but what's the price of the arm as opposed to the bushes alone?

 

[Romasato]

Funny, no coincidence the mechanic who was replacing bushes for my RX was not a very happy chap either! He said he should have charged more as it took him 1.5hr longer with all that engine lifting etc.