Pressing On…

I like my shop press.

If you recall from last week, I decided that while I had everything out of the way of the rear leaf springs I would replace their bushings.

Replacement was trivial for the shackle bushings – they just slide out:

However, the front of the leaf spring has what’s called an “eye bushing” and it is a press fit – meaning it’s held in place by friction after being pressed into the slightly-smaller-than-the-bushing hole it goes into in the spring:

Without a means to apply enough pressure to push the bushing out, removing said bushing would have taken hours and countless four letter words.

Thankfully, with the means to apply enough pressure to push the bushing out (thanks shop press!), removing said bushing took all of a minute:

Truthfully, it took longer than a minute due to the original hydraulic jack on the press not being any good. I had to run to a local hardware store to pick up a replacement before any of the shop press magic could happen:

Once the new jack was installed, the bushings didn’t stand a chance and out they came:

Since I don’t like putting rusty parts back on my cars, I took the leaf spring hardware that I removed:

…and cleaned it up:

I cleaned up and painted the leaf spring as well after using the shop press to install the new eye bushing:

With all the pieces prettied up, it was time to bolt everything to the car. I’m happy to report that the install went fairly smoothly and the passenger side leaf spring is now happily returned to its place of origin:

You’ll notice that the nuts aren’t on very tight in the shackles in the image above. I did this on purpose to avoid putting the bushings in a bind. Once the car’s suspension is bearing the full weight of the car, I’ll torque everything down as it should be.

And with that, half of Project Bushing was completed. I started on the other half today by removing the driver’s side leaf spring. Thankfully, it came out just as easily as the passenger side one did:

Hopefully, I’ll have enough time this week to clean up the hardware and the spring so I can re-install everything next weekend.

Bonus Content:

The shop had a new addition this week:

That’s a Lincoln Electric 220 Volt AC stick welder that I picked up at a yard sale this weekend for all of 18 dollars. Included in the price was a shop light and two compressed air hoses all tangled up with the welder’s cabling.

The welder’s leads are shot and will need to be replaced before the unit can be safely used, but for 18 dollars it’s hard to go wrong – especially if the air hoses alone were worth the price. I don’t know how to stick weld, but now I have an opportunity to learn sometime in the future.