i was doing a disc brake swap and noticed the bushings on the donor were done so i ordered new ones.

took them to a machine shop this morning and they ****ing destroyed this thing trying to press it in. they tried to tell me i had the wrong part, even though it says on the box i gave them it is for this car. they told me they were too big. visually they are the same, i measured them with just a tape measure and near as i can tell they are the same.

im just trying to figure out who ****ed up here.

this is the same as the part i bought, did i just get something crap quality thus making me the **** up?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eB...ht_2578wt_1166

i also was thinking maybe the donor arms came from a different car. i know they are integra but for some reason i was thinking DAs might be slightly smaller and maybe i was given those by mistake, but searching says they are in fact bigger which would result in these being loose...so they must dc arms.

i really dont know where to go from here. i am royally pissed because ive already replaced the control arms and several bolts which of course all broke, i thought i was finally near the end of the tunnel.

i was thinking try local shops for a 2nd opinion? i drove all the way out to a machine shop assuming they would know what they were doing.
or maybe have another shop have a go with the other bushing since im going to have to buy more anyway? i would have tried elsewhere already but i had to borrow a car to get there and i wasted all morning waiting on those guys to even start and ran out of time.
or just take it to honda to sort out hoping they stock these and wont charge me out the ***?

or is there some other possible scenario im missing here? thanks for any help guys.

 

i thought the new bushings were supposed to be slightly bigger thats why they have to be pressed in and cant be done buy hand my opinion go to a tire place that works on suspensions

 

i thought so as well. i went out of my way to drive all the way out to this place, they specifically advertise that they do this service, it is a napa owned machine shop. i trusted it would get handled which is the main reason i am so pissed off. i also doubt mr. ebay seller is going to refund my destroyed parts.

right now its looking like honda is my best bet, and hope they are kind with their prices for the parts...if ebays were $55 im a little worried haha.

im just debating whether i should try to have another shop put in the remaining bushing so if they succeed i can make these ****ers replace they part they killed.

 

yea you have to heat it up push it out and do the same with like a 12 ton press to put them in. i wouldn't go to a machine shop unless you knew they knew what they're doing.

try a shop that specializes in suspension.

 

me and a friend of mine pushed them in with a vise and some lube

 

They are a major pain in the ***.

I replaced mine with aftermarket Moog, from O'Riley's. I believe they were like $35 for the set, and look to me to be better quality than the original bushings.

We were able to install them without a press, using some grease, a rusty piston from a tractor, and a big hammer, but they were tough.

 

I've done lca bushings w/ a socket, 2 blocks of wood and a vice...royal PITA, cant imagine how frustrating it is to do trailing arm bushings judging by the size

 

yeah i asked these fools and they didnt even use grease or anything, i know back when i worked in a shop with a press we greased them...granted we only did a few bushings there ever, and most of them were mine not customers.

i mean they told me the part was wrong and didnt say anything else. i was like what happens if i buy a new part and come back, considering this is the same part they will give me? lmao.



i just bought new lcas, i wasnt even touching those. i had to hacksaw through bushings on both of them haha

 

I bought the press tool made for it. Worked great. Had them both done in about an hour. I figured for the amount to probably have it pressed, and then also I could re-align the position as well as the car is lowered... it was worth the 114 bucks.

 

thats not a bad price, i would have got one but all the threads i read were saying it was 150+. i think its a bit late now, all my other parts are here and i dont want to wait any longer. this shop would have charged me $16 a bushing had they been competent enough to actually do it.

plus i already spent 90 bucks on a flaring kit because my brake lines were also stripped, this simple looking project has been kicking my ***.

 

if you haven't learned it yet no project is simple.
why can't you go back to the shop you used to do yours at?

 

If it doesn't work out with the OEM style ones, and you are ok with what they say about the Energy Suspension bushings (something about bump steer or something being affected), I found it's very easy to install them. You need the metal rings in the arms though...

 

well the shop i worked at went out of business like 2 years ago. its right up the street too...

like is said maybe i would have better luck with oe honda parts instead of ebay. im probably heading down to honda as soon as i can find a car or a ride, and hopefully they can sort it all out.

 

I took out my worn LCA bushings with a torch, a sawzall, a bench vise, and a hammer/screwdriver. I clamped the arm on the vise, heated the rubber with torch until it was soft for sawzall to cut it out, then cut a slit in the outer metal ring of the bushing and pounded/pried it out with screwdriver.

I put in new energy suspension bushings, using the same tools. hammer, lube, bench vise, tenacity. Took a while but I finally got it.

And here's "what they say about ES bushings"

as for the trailing arms, when you go around a turn, the wheels can tilt in and out (camber) because the OEM bushings have cutouts in the rubber and it's soft. This tilting action of the wheel from side to side is called deflection. When you replace OEM bushings with ES ones, there are no cutouts in the polyurethane, and the poly is much harder than OEM rubber bushings. This means the wheel can't tilt as much from side to side (camber/deflection) and stays more vertical through a hard turn. That is the theory... here's my experience...

Under hard cornering, it seems like the ES trailing arm bushings make the back of the car feel lighter. It's more prone to breaking loose and sliding sideways like a drift. BUT at the same time (I know this sounds bad) -- the back of the car never steps out far enough to oversteer and cause a spin out. The back of the car seems to follow the front through a hard turn more precisely, almost as if it's bouncing and sliding along to stay behind where the front wheels are pointing.

I like the ES bushings better and they are easier to put it.

As for your issue, try the machine shop again and see if you can get someone else there to do it. Maybe the dude was just tired and hungover like fvck it, and did some half-as$ed work....

 

update. culprit is in fact the ebay seller i thinks. i came across this article while googling:

http://www.performanceforum.com/wesv...g/bushing.html

apparently there are 2 part numbers one bushing is 3.170 inches and 1 is 3.352 inches.

i headed off to honda with this new revelation, sure enough when i whipped out mine it was noticable larger than what honda had. i guess ebay cloned the larger? who knows but after seeing the 2 it makes sense this thing wouldnt fit.

i love these guys and they did an exceptional job of helping me, but it was worse than i dreamed. $150 for the bushings...the parts and service guys were also nice enough to run around and find someone willing to install them for me, but after a quote of $115 for the hour of labor to do it i had to bow out...

i dropped it off at a local shop willing to do it, with a nice quote of $20.

i have now spent about $600(not including the actual trailing arms and brake parts which i already had laying around) and 9 days on a simple brake conversion, gotta love it.

 

Good info!

 

indeed i wish i had it to begin with, but thats life. picked them up from the shop, i actually went to the one i used to work at i forgot it had reopened with new owners, they did a great job, and only charged me 20 bucks. napa had wanted 32, honda 115. at least i finally came out ahead somewhere.

all i have left to worry about is if the brake lines i redid are going to hold up, and i still have to switch out the prop valve.