Today I made a start on fixing the rear suspension bushes on my Fiesta. I spent a long time (and nearly all my bricks) raising the back of the car and unbolting the suspension trailing arms. The near side wasn’t too difficult, but on the offside a found that I couldn’t remove the trailing arm support bolt because the exhaust was in the way. In the end I had to unbolt the suspension support bracket from the bottom of the car before I could get the bolt out of the bush.
It was immediately obvious that getting the bushes out would be tricky. There was a lot of rust and clouting them with a hammer made no difference at all. In the end I concluded that I would have to cut them out. Using a combination of my drill, reciprocating saw and a hacksaw blade I managed to remove the centre from the bush and then slowly cut outwards through the bush casing. I had to be careful not to cut into the end of the swing arm!
With the bush mostly cut through I was able to use a large screwdriver to peel the casing back until it snapped and then knock out the remains of the bush. I was gratified later to find several YouTube videos where others had reached the same solution.
With the bush out I used a sanding tool on the end of my drill to clean out the end of the swing arm ready for the new bush.
