Control Arms Controlled!

[Tom Byrum <mycroft@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

First of all, I'd like to thank everyone who emailed me with suggestions on how
to get the ball joint off the strut. I'd love to email you all personally to
thank you, but apparently this place I work at doesn't feel like paying me to
write email all afternoon. :-)

In the end (or, actually, halfway through the job) what it took was a 5-piece
pickle-fork set from Sears Hardware (which opens at 8am on Sundays! I was
amazed.), three car guys holding various things, two hands, and one swing with a
10lb. sledge. The clatter of the control arm hitting the garage floor was
near-musical.

Taking a look at them, I was very glad I was replacing the control arms along
with the bushings. I didn't even want to TRY to get the old bushings off the
arms. So, I just pressed the whole thing out of the brackets, control arm and
attached bushing, with the help of a 1-3/4" socket I found for $3 at the local
discount hardware shop.

After a thorough cleaning of the bushing bracket, we aligned the alignment marks
on the bushing and bracket, and pressed the thing in, easy as pie.

Now, we had to figure out how to (quickly) lube the bushings, get them on the
arms, get the arms on the car, get the wheels on the car, and get the whole
thing down on the ground before the bushings de-lubed. For lubing the bushings
we simply used what must have been about a 50-50 mix of dish cleaner and water,
spread it over the inside of the bushing and on the control arm, and pushed.

And pushed.

And twisted.

And pushed some more.

This wasn't going to work. So, like we did the last time, we resorted to the
hammer. The hammer, backed by a softish piece of plywood. One good slam, and the
bushing popped right over the lip that had been holding us up, and a bit of a
twist further pushed it right into position. Bushing onto control arm faster
than Schumacher can circle Laguna Seca. We had similar results on the second
arm.

After that was a whirlwind as we mounted and torqued both arms on the car in
about 15 minutes, then mounted the wheels and dropped the car. All told, the job
was half an hour dropping the arms, 1 hour getting the drivers-side subframe
joint undone, two hours hammering, heating, lubing, etc on the strut mount.

The next day it took only 5 minutes to get the strut joint apart, then another
hour to get the bushings pressed, fit, and mounted. So really, the job should
have taken two hours to get done.

As for heat damaging the strut, the guy who owns and runs the torch seemed to
think that the metal would only be damaged or weakened (we were nowhere near hot
enough to cut or melt) if we actually quenched the metal with water or anything
other than amibient cooling. As we let it cool by itself each time, I don't
imagine there should be a problem there.

Once again, thanks to everyone who offered advice or help. These lists truely
are the best resources on the net for BMW help.

		Thanks,
			Tom Byrum
			1987 325is with new M3 control arm bushings

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End of bmw-digest V9 #2026
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