Hi all, my daughter's 93 245 is in need of suspension bits. I bought new Bilstein front and rears and a rear bushing kit from IPD. Local independent shop wants $277 to do the shocks and $792 to do the rear bushings. I was blown away by the bushings price.

I'm trying to figure out which parts I should do myself to save cost. I've already decided to pay to have the front shocks done and do the rears myself. It also looks like the trailer arm bushings are the hard ones. Are any of the other rear bushings easy enough for a novice mechanic to do?

Regards,
Andrew

 

I had a local shop charge me $80 labor to install front shocks (I purchased off ebay) and another $20 for a ball joint. The rear shocks are very easy and recommend doing it yourself. I would call around as $277 feels super steep. I went to a small shop run by an old timer and talked to him in person. He did a great job!

If you have not done the tie-rods and ball joints it would be a good time to check them out.

 

doing /all/ the rear bushings is a bitch of a job, many hours to get all those out and pressed and replaced. some of them require massive amounts of hacking to actually extract the old bushings from the suspension parts, even with a 5 ton hydraulic press and the right press tools.

 

OK, I guess a blanket replacement of all the rear bushings is a bad idea. I'm probably better off inspecting each one and deciding which are a must to replace.

 

I did do it to our 240, which at rather high mileage had developed a number of clunks and rumbles in the rear... I had a volvo specialist shop do it, where the head mechanic was a casual friend (he was very involved with the boy scout troop my son was in at the time), so what I reported above was what he said, showing me some of the old bushings that he ended up having to blowtorch to get out on the shops big press.

I think the main ones that wear are the primary pivots on the rear trailing arms, and the panhard rod bushings, and perhaps the two torque arms. the full IPD kit I'd bought included a bunch more. I do think we paid around $800 labor for that, and he said it took way over 8 hours (8*100) but they didn't bill us for the over-run. He also said he's not sure he'd want to take on such a job again, hah! this guy is a really good V mechanic, long time dealer master mechanic, been the head wrench at this large indie for 20 years. the shop was formerly all volvo, but has expanded to volvo/bmw/mercedes/vw/audi.