This has been stalled for a while as the upper control arm bushings would just not go into the control arms. Graeme Payne eventually worked out what was going on for me. He discovered that he had two slightly different designs of the 407/408 upper control arms in stock. They both had the same part number cast into them but the hole for the bushings on one kind were 1" and the other kind was 1.05". The bushings are ~1.06". So the bushings would probably be perfect for the cars with the 1.05" design of control arms but my car's control arms are all the 1" ones and there's no way those 1.06" bushings were ever going in. I mangled 2 badly trying to squeeze them in there. IMHO that was pretty poor practice of Bristol to make any change like that and not change the part number.
I used the better of the two bushings left that were not totally mangled by my previous attempts to fit them. I fitted it on a section of 1/2" threaded rod and put the rod in the chuck of an electric drill. The drill was rigidly mounted horizontally in my trusty, 40+ year old Black and Decker Workmate. Then, turning the bushing with the drill, I sanded it down using a sanding block fitted with 150 grit wet and dry until I got the overall diameter down from 1 1/16" to 1 1/32". I had frozen the bushing but it actually seemed to sand better as it warmed up.
It still needed a good greasing and a lot of pressure from the table vice but it's in!
The 4 replacement bushings arrived in customs in New York today. So they will probably be here this week and will then get the same treatment but I may use 220 grit to sand a bit more cautiously.
David
|