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***A lil tip I got from Jonnie Fraz (Stealth Custom Fab) stick your solid bushings in the freezer the night before at least to get them nice n cold so they shrink a bit and fit in easier.
***also wanna point out that there are not as many pics as I would like to have put in here, cause I was doing this alone and couldn’t just drop everything to take pic. So I appologize
First off I ordered up a set of SPL Pro Suspension Solid Differential Bushings off their website.
Once they came in and I had the free time I jacked the rear off the car off the ground and put it on a set of jack stands.
Here is what we are looking at replacing:
I preceded by unbolting the driveshaft from the diff, then the 6 bolts per side off the axles. I also made sure I unbolted one side of the rear sway bar.
(side note***) Depending on where your exhaust is located you might need to unbolt it from the rear and let it hag as well. It might be in the way of you unbolting and dropping the diff.
After removing everything attached to the diff I unbolted the two rear nuts from the diff located here:
Once they were out I put a jack under the diff to help support it, then took out the front two bolts of the diff holding it to the chassis.
Once everything was free and clear I lowered the diff using the jack and wobbling it back and forth to get the diff free from the rear of the sub-frame.
Once it was free and lowered to the ground I pulled it out from underneath the car.
Once the Diff was out I could then get complete access to the rear bushings that needed to be replaced.
A pic from the diff side:
A pic from the rear of the car:
Now begins the fun part!!!
After a few hours and consulting a few people I found the fastest and easiest way to remove these bushings.
They have a metal center that most know, with a lil rubber wrapped around that with a metal collar around the outside.
The trick is, is to cut that outside collar so you can tap the bushing out. Fastest way I found was to take a drill with a drill bit about the size diameter of the rubber and drill out the rubber at the bottom of the bushing located here:
As you can see I did here:
After I drilled out enough rubber to stick a saws-all blade in the hallowed out area I made I slid a saw blade in there with a saws-all and cut to one side of the outer collar.
I cut going in one direction like so:
You wanna make sure you keep the blade flat and you wanna just cut that collar so take your time and check often on your progress.
Then after I cut to one side I flipped the blade around and cut to the other side like so:
Once I felt like I cut through both sides I used a hammer and a punch, gave it a few whacks and the bushing popped right out. Took less than five minutes per bushing. Now originally I tried some other options that just were not working at all and it took me forever it seemed like and I got no where. But once I attacked them with the saws-all they way I just described it seriously took bout 5 minutes per bushing.
Now I have both bushings out:
***A lil tip I got from Jonnie Fraz (Stealth Custom Fab) stick your solid bushings in the freezer the night before at least to get them nice n cold so they shrink a bit and fit in easier.
I got the lil tip a little late but no worries, I stuck the bushings in a bag of ice for about an hour or so:
Once the bushings where removed, the holes the bushings came from were properly cleaned and free of any burrs and the new ones where nice n cold I got a type of press from Rob (Mestizo) that consist of two steel type of washers and a long bolt and a nut. We used this device many times to press in bushings on the lower control arms and such.
I found that inserting and pressing these bushings in from the rear of the car to the front works much easier. As shown:
Now both bushings are pressed in.
Once they were pressed in I put the front bushings on the front of the diff, there were easy to do just pressed them in with my hand.
Then I preceded to install the diff back into its rightful place in the chassis:
Once I got the diff back into the car I attached the rear axles, the driveshaft, rear sway and exhaust back where it belongs and double checked everything was nice and tight.
Here is some pics of a comparison of the old and the new:
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