Poly bushing woes (front LCA)? Options

[HectortheRican]

For those of you who have successfully installed poly suspension bushings, did you run into this issue?


Basically, since this bushing is a two-piece and a steel collar, I think there's an air bubble that won't give when I press in the steel collar. I've tried 3-jaw pullers, c-clamps, a vise, and a press. I can't get this bushing further in than the image shows. Any tips?

[Bitter]

Ah yep, my 00 up here in salt country needed many hours of cutting torch time to get it all apart because the OE bushing steel sleeves had cold welded themselves to the shanks of the bolts. Not fun at all!


Generally if you press it down really hard and just let it sit for a few hours it'll release most of the air slowly, I want to say that heating it will soften the grease and rubber and let the air out too since it increases the air pressure at the same time the softening is happening, at least according to science that should work. For whatever reason I never had air-locked bushings doing all the work to the Celica, but I have ran into it with brake caliper parts and the solution is to hold pressure or take it out, remove the excess grease, apply sparingly, and reassemble. Usually just holding pressure on it for a minute or two gets it out of a caliper pin bore.