I second your difficulties on rear Kmacs. (archive)
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Posted by Richard Powlas III on February 19, 2001 at 20:57:08:
In Reply to: Re: was removing OE bushings the problem ? posted by JH on February 18, 2001 at 23:42:33:
(posted from: host-216-78-22-119.cae.bellsouth.net (216.78.22.119))
No, Just had to take the trailing arms down to a machine shop to have them pressed out with the supplied tool.(It took 4 tons to press them out!) The problem only begins when you fit the new bushings into the trailing arm eyelets. You see, the new poly bushings are inserts that do not have to be pressed in. They are two seperate pieces that are inserted on either side of the eyelets with a center shaft that you grease and push in. The center shaft is eccentric. Now the center shaft also has a lip on it and then a large ringed washer is placed on the other end of the poly bushing. This adds approximately 1/2" to the length of the eyelet. Now when you go to install the trailing arm back onto the crossmember brackets you will find that they were not designed to accept this additional width. Bending these brackets out a little met with marginal success. Alot of banging, and cursing met with about the same. I then ground down the edges of one of the large washers so it would fit inside the brackets. Finally I got one of the holes to line up and inserted the through bolt. By putting a socket onto this bolt and turning, I found that you could line up the other side quite easily as the eccentric turns it will raise or lower the trailing arm for you. Now for the other side, my human intelligence kicked in and I ground down each eyelet by 1/8" and trimmed the poly bushing by the same. Assembled and they fit into the brackets with ease. Of course having use of a lift instead of having the car on jack stands might help also. It does seem that you can get quite a bit of camber adjustment from this setup both negative (track) and positive (street). OOPS! got to go now, my finger nail is about to fall off from where I banged it with the hammer you see.
My thumbnail just grew back from install 6 months ago. I had almost identical problems! There has got to be a better way for the 85 - 88 models.
RP3
88 IS
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