Disclaimer: The instructions below are what I did to my car and can be used as a "guide" for working on yours. But, I take no responsibility for what you decide to do to your car. Be sure to read through all of the instructions first before doing anything to your vehicle.
Purpose: Replaces your soft rubber bushings with polyurethane ones. Makes the car feel a lot tighter and more stable during autoxing. The vertical bushing eliminates the 73mph steering wheel shake a lot of Neons get on the highway. Also, it helps to eliminate wheel hop.
Application: 1st Generation '95-'99 Dodge Neons.
Time Required: 4-6 hrs
Scale of Difficulty: 4 (5 being the hardest)
Cost: ~$100
Tools Required:
Here you can see the tear in the vertical bushing that is responsible for wheel hop and that 73 mph shake. Actually when I got it out of the car, the "tear" appears to be a gap that was designed into the bushing when it was molded. Most likely for NVH.
The front was definately the hardest for me to do and took the most time. The large vertical bushing takes a while to burn out and the passenger's side control arm was a pain for me to re-install with the new, larger, stiffer bushings installed. With that said, it was definately worth the trouble, so here we go . . .
1. Loosen lug nuts and put car on jackstands. Remove tires.
2. Remove the 15mm nut and bolt holding the front swaybar to the control arm on both sides. Remove the 13mm bolts holding the clamps to the K-frame and the swaybar will fall down. Put it off to the side.
3. Remove the 21mm bolt that goes through the vertical bushing. Remove the 21mm nut holding the horizontal bushing in place.
4. Remove the 18mm nut and 15mm pinch bolt that holds the control arm ball joint stud to the knuckle and use a crowbar to pry the ball joint from the knuckle. You should be able to weasel the control arm out of the car now.
5. Light your torch and burn out the horizontal bushing the best you can. I burned out most of it and then pressed and hammered out the small metal sleeve in the center. After that the rest of the rubber comes out pretty easily. Make sure you leave the larger metal sleeve installed.
6. Same thing with the vertical bushing. Burn it out the best you can and then I used a sharp utility knife to help cut it out as well. With the center out, burn/scrape out the rest of the rubber.
7. With a hammer and flat head screwdriver, pound out the metal sleeve of the vertical bushing in the control arm. I was only able to get it to move 1/8", so I used the Dremel to cut a slit in it and then it pounded right out with ease. (see pics above)
8. Now you're ready to install the new vertical & horizontal bushings. Put anti-seize on all the sides and what not and slide them into place. I was able to put them in with my hands and didn't need to use a press or vice or anything.
9. Now to put this bad boy back on the car, which can be a PITA. On the driver's side, I put the vertical bushing end in first and got the bolt started. Then swung the control arm around so the horizontal bushing end would go into its place and put that bolt through. Then with one arm I pushed the rotor up and used my other hand to position the ball joint stud under it so it would fit in it's hole. Having a friend to hold the rotor up would have been a lot easier.
10. On the passenger's side I did it a bit differently. I put the horizontal bushing side in first, then the ball joint stud. With those two ends in, I could lift the rotor up enough to get the vertical bushing end in its spot. It seemed to be a bit easier this way. Again, a friend holding the rotor up would have helped a lot. Most likely you'll need to hammer the control arm around to get it to line up the way it's supposed to.
11. Torque everything down to specs. If you have trouble getting the pinch bolt that holds the ball joint stud to the knuckle to go through you may have to raise or lower the stud with the crowbar to get it to line up. If you look up at the two pics above, the one on the right shows the indentation in the stud for the bolt to slide through.
12. Put the new bushings on your swaybar (don't forget the anti-seize) then put the bar on the car and loosely secure it with the two clamps. Make sure the split in the bushings face the front of the car. Then put the new bolts and bushings through each end of the swaybar and secure it to the control arm. Set the car on ramps, crawl under and tighten the two clamps for the swaybar.
1. Loosen lug nuts and put car on jackstands. Remove tires.
2. The pic above shows the order that I took everything apart. This method went very smoothly for me and seemed to be the quickest. If your suspension is rusted at all, it will prolly be a PITA to remove some of the bolts without breaking them.
(#1) Remove just the 21mm nut on the strut rod. Hold the strut rod with a large crescent wrench to keep it from spinning.
(#2) The other end of the strut rod is bolted to a bracket and the bracket, in turn, is bolted to the frame with (2) 18mm bolts. Remove the (2) 18mm bolts, then with the bracket and strut rod off the car, unbolt the strut rod from the bracket. Put the new bushings on, coating them with anti-seize and then do the reverse of removal to reinstall the strut rod. Make sure the new bushings line up in their grooves when you tighten everything down.
(#3) Remove the 18mm nut and bolt holding the trailing arms (control arms) to the knuckle.
(#4) You might wanna draw a quick sketch of where the notch is on the toe adjuster before you remove the 18mm nut and bolt that holds the trailing arms to the frame.
3. Here's what I did to replace these bushings and it went pretty fast. I placed an 8mm socket in one end of the metal sleeve (used the 10mm for the bigger bushing) and put the 21mm deep socket on the other end. Then, I used the "C" clamp to press the metal sleeve out of the bushing as far as I could, which was about half way. The 8mm (10mm) socket will be stuck in there. Now, go get a bucket of water handy and light your torch. Burn out the rubber bushing the best you can. Then quickly turn off your torch and put a short extension into the 8mm socket and pound out the metal sleeve with a hammer while the metal is still hot. You may have to re-heat it if it's difficult to pound out. I used a sawhorse for support when hammering. Get a rag or gloves and put the 8mm (10mm) socket and sleeve in the bucket of water. Then, use a screwdriver to easily push the old bushing out of the trailing arm. Put the arm in water to cool it off and you're ready for the other end.
4. Once all the old bushings are out and the holes are all clean, put some anti-seize on the new bushings and you should be able to slide them right in with your hands like I was.
5. Put everything back the way you took it off and don't forget to reset your toe setting.
