Fitting Top and Bottom Steering Column Bushes

[Greg]

Need to fit new bushes at both ends and wondered if there were any tricks of the trade.

Seems a bit tricky if you have one bush in place and you push the second bush past its 'lug holes' - that's having found a 'suitable bar' to drift the bushes as recommended by the haynes manual.

Any tips could save me hours of mental torture and secure the holy grail of a fresh MOT.

Greg  

[Pete Lewis]

plenty of lubrication and take it steady when pressing in maybe a small cut with a stanley blade to just give some relief to the leading edge of the lug
to remove old bush cut through it (avoid tube) with a hacksaw blade/padsaw and withdraw it easy...peter    ( my new bushes have done 3yrs and looking ready for a change already)

[Keith]

Greg,
You can cheat if the rubber part of the bush is OK. What normally wears is the nylon insert and it's easy just to replace this. Alternatively, if it hasn't worn too much take it out and out a bit of tape round the outside and put it back. This is normally enough to keep the MOT man happy!

Keith

[1971vitesse]

Hi

I used the steering column itself to drift out the old ones.   then I burned the rubber off one of the old bushes and used this to drift the new ones in, again using the steering column.  It worked a treat.

David

[Greg]

Thanks for everyone's comments, in the end I cut the excess rubber at the lug hole using a stanley knife and then got a long piece of copper pipe and leaned on each bush, bit like punting a boat.

The new ones were drifted in using lots of grease, apart from the rubber lugs taking a bit if a battering worked ok.

Really like the cheat of simply replacing the plastic inserts - a good fall back if all else fails.

Thanks once again.

Greg