Rear Lateral Link Poly Bushings 2017

[Imp558]

*** If a mod would sticky / FAQ this it would be cool. All the appropriate P/Ns are below..***

 

 

 

Okay, in the old days (like 6 months ago) we could all go get Second Gen Dorman trailing arms, either ES 9.9108 or Prothane 19-604 bushings (both brands are available in Red or Black) and it was easy from there.

 

Not long ago Dorman appears to have discontinued the Gen II lats so I was forced to improvise - and improvise I did tonight.

 

Initially Chinese Matt had made me a set of modded lats, and the project got back-burnered so I never ordered the other 2 to complete the set (I thought I ordered them 2 years ago but I likely blew the money on women and booze at the time).

 

When I finally ordered recently the Dorman ones were nowhere to be found but the AC ones were abundant so that's what I got, the P/N's are in the following picture. (ACD# 45G36010, GM# 88875323)

 

 

I already had my Prothane 19-604 bushings installed in the modded lats from before but to my horror the ones slated for the rest of the rear were too small to fit snugly in the AC lats and actually had a significant amount of play.

 

I found that if I cut the hardened sleeve out from the AC rubber bushing and pressed it all together it was a good tight fit but unfortunately they bulged out the ends considerably. This is the Prothane sleeve next to the AC one and the difference in size is noticeable.

 

 

My fix was pretty simple, the excess was approximately 1/8" on each side so I decided to simply shorten the poly bushings.

A hose clamp looked to be a pretty good guide so the wire wheel could just grind away the excess so I took that approach and gee it worked swell...

 

 

I still had the Dorman sleeves from my first 2 lats and they were exactly the same length and diameter as the AC ones so I actually used them in the end because they had a slightly smaller center hole than the AC ones and it seemed like less slop would be a good thing. Besides that I messed up an AC one and didn't have a set of 4.

 

In this picture left to right: 1)Dorman sleeve, 2)Dorman sleeve polished on the wire wheel and ready for install, 3)AC sleeve polished on the wire wheel and ready for install, 4)Prothane sleeve.

 

 

So Pretty.......

 

 

I used a lot of grease for pressing, and to encourage the sleeve to spin in the bushing once in the car. I used my press but it was an easy press that could have happened in a bench vise instead so you do not need a press for this. Pressing the sleeves in is simply not happening with a hammer without beating the hell out of things and scuffing the bushings up badly. A piece of allthread and large washers would get it done with a little determination though.

 

I pressed one bushing onto a sleeve from the inside and then pressed that bushing into the lat and remaining bushing half to prevent the sleeve from making the outer end of the bushing uglyish.

 

I polished the sleeves on a wire wheel, and used the wire wheel to remove what I didn't want of the poly bushing but I'm sure if one really wanted to carve the bushings with a knife and use sandpaper or emery cloth to clean and sand bushings this could be done without the wire wheel.

 

Thanks for reading!!

Edited November 13, 2017 by Imp558

[rich_e777]

Nice! Going to have to do this for my coupe if I can get another set of modded links.