Are all the rear suspension bushings impossible to replace? My station wagon's handling recently went from terrible to extra terrible and it tended to shift a good six inches side to side if you lent on it so I decided to replace the panhard rod bushings. There really wasn't any rubber left on either of them so good thing I did. But I was told I could press them in with a bench vise and some dish soap. Didn't work. Tried heating the rod up with a torch, the 35 years of grease and mud caked on it caught fire, still didn't work. I was fed up and it was late at night and this is my only car so I decided to use a rasp to file that extra couple of micrometers off the casing of the bushings so they'd fit. After like an hour of that they went in with the vise. Well almost, close enough. At least my car's rear end doesn't wiggle when I shift gears anymore. But are all the rear suspension bushings gonna be that hard to replace? Because pretty much every one of them need to be replaced and I'd rather not give it to my mechanic because then I'd have to give him money, and I don't like doing that. It's like in those infomercials for the Ding King where it's all black and white and there's a repairman laughing and smoking a cigar while a guy piles money in his outstretched hand. That's what it's like. But I digress.

 

The rubber will need to be pressed in, you can use Polyurethane bushings that can be installed with a vise but are more expensive.

 

we will being doing some new suspension pieces on the 240... hopefully very soon.
I can let you know how it goes after we are finished.

 

So what do I use to press them in if not a vise?

 

Volvo had special tools that allowed techs to remove and replace bushings without having to use a hydraulic press or a machine shop ... Here an example of someone re-creating one of those ...

http://www-ese.fnal.gov/People/wilce...shing_tool.htm

 

pure genius

 

I've never met a suspension bush I couldn't put in with a big mallet and a block of wood.
A vise doesn't really provide much torque.
Soapy water is a great lubricant for bushes, it dries to not slippery, unlike silicone.

Regards, Andrew.