radious arm bushing replacement

[stevedud]

I've read through all the post and am ready to tackle it.

I think I'm lucky and my rivots are already gone and replaced with bolts. Does anyone have a picture of what they look like. I want to make sure I looking at the right place.

Assuming they are gone and are bolts, how long will it take me to replace them?

 

[slag]

an hour or more per side starting from when you jack the vehicle up to when you drop the vehicle back down.

The bolts are sometimes a pain to get loose even with air and then you have to take the 4 bolts loose on the center of the support as well to remove it.

 

[Commtech]

If you have not had them replaced before on this vehicle then I would say get out the drill. I had my passenger side done the first time and the shop dropped the front wheel. I had it done again 3 years later (5 months ago) and had both replaced. The same shop drilled and took out the cross member to replace them. Next time I will do it myself since the shop has done all the hard work.
The cross member is pretty much right behind the fron tires going accross both frame rails under the transmision

 

[DeRocha]

There will be 2 rivots per side located in the same relative positions. The Left (driver's) side has one right under the emergency brake cable. I did a combination of Dremel cutting and grinding with mixed results. This job is time consuming and will take a while to do. I would suggest and early start on a weekend and to tackle the job as 1 unit. That is don't try and remove one rivot or one bracket at a time. IMO it would be best to grind off the rivot heads on all 4 rivots at once. Remove all bolts from the brackets and then pry one bracket off at a time. Do this by grabbing the backet in the middle of the frame and pull down. Once the bracket is off you can try to knock the rivot out. This is where an air hammer comes in handy. If you cannot knock the rivot out then you will have to grind it down flush and then knock it out.

Radius Arm Bracket Rivot locations

 

[DeRocha]

As a side note I would use polyurathane bushings that are flexible. I had picked up some Perfect circle bushings and they were Very hard and I couldn't flex them at all.. These would have added "Harshness" to the ride quality. I ended up using poly bushings from Energy Suspension. They are flexible and give a good feel to the front end.

 

[Rhett]

Another suggestion...lightly lubricate the poly bushings BEFORE you put them in with some water-resistant grease, like you use for the tie rods or balljoint zerks (if you have them). Lubing them before install will reduce the clunks you might get with the polys.

 

[Commtech]

AMEN to the Lube!!! Mine are the hard Poly's and I have a terrible Squeek on bumps. I put some WD-40 on one day and it quieted it right down, until the next hard rain I drove in. The heavy spray rinsed it right out