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replacing lower control arm bushing

35K views 8 replies 6 participants last post by  fastshift 
#1 ·
I've been looking around on here about information on replacing the passenger side control arm bushing, but can't find anything. I saw where some said you can't cause you would need a press but then I saw where you could with certain bushings. Seems like people prefer the ones topspeed makes?? I believe thats the name of them. Can anyone help me out or at least point me in the right direction please. I have a 165k 04 mazda 3 and im trying to at least get it to 200k. its not in bad shape now but the noises im hearing are killing me. I had my friend who is a mechanic take a look a little while ago and he said that i would need a new bushing and wouldnt be able to get any alignments done until then. I have to replace that and the front shocks. i have a good amount of noise and some wheel hop.....wheel hops not fun when a sudden stop comes up on a bumpy road. I'm trying to save as much money i can here so any help from anyone would be great, and I would appreciate it a lot!

Thanks in advance for any helpful advice
 
#3 ·
Are you definite you mean the control arm and not the trailing link/arm? I just did the trailing link bushings and let me just tell you that without the right tools it will be a pain in the ASS. Luckily I have a very close friend whose father works at a machine shop with the necessary tools at his house. To get the bushing out we used an air hammer to beat the crap out of it until it practically peeled/broke the metal sleeve in half.. no you cannot bang it out with a hammer it just wont work you'll be fighting with it for hours or even days going that way... As for getting the new bushing in you'll need to either invent some interesting press tool or buy one. What we did was use a hydraulic press that he just happened to have at his house too and old wheel bearings until we found the right sizes that fit.
ALSO don't forget that it needs to be lined up exactly how the old one was. What I mean by that is don't press the bushing all the way into the trailing link or it wont line up to the holes to bolt back up AND make sure its rotated the right way so the bushing "post" is horizontal with the body and not VERTICAL. If you think your capable of that then do it. You'll save yourself $140 per side not having to buy the whole replacement part.
Also my friends father said mechanic probably wouldn't do this and that they would ship it out to a machine shop like his with the correct tools to do so.
 
#5 ·
It's a major pain in the ass. The only way I was able to get this to work was to file down the control arm ends where the bushings are and hammer them on, but I wouldn't recommend this. It's been over a year I think and I haven't had any problems, but it isn't something I would do again by any means. They're hard as hell to get on and I would just go with a new set of control arms if the bushings are bad, or look into the Dominant Engineering arms ($600).
 
#6 ·
so I've decided just to buy a new control arm since I couldn't really find a single passenger side bushing worth the price. I ended up buying a control arm with ball joint and bushings. I've been looking for a write up of step by step instructions and the only thing i really found was one saying that it should be simple but i'd have to jack the engine up out of the way a little. I looked on youtube and found no videos as well :( could someone send me a link to a write up if there is one? or perhaps give me a quick walkthrough and any tricks i should do?

thanks in advanced!
 
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