Difficult to change upper control arm bushings? advice?

[ViEJO_C1500]

so my passenger side upper control arm bushings are squeaking really bad and is hella embarrassing. I'm looking to swap the bushing out instead of the whole upper control arm. any advice before I start. my truck is a 1991 c1500 2wd . thanks for the help guys!

 

[sewlow]

IIRC, you have to re-use the inner metal sleeves of the original bushings.
If you're doing the one side, I'd say to do the other side while you're at it, too.
New bushings in the one side just may show the age & mileage & the resultant shortcomings of the side not changed.
When I did mine, I picked up a set of control arms, upper & lower, from the the wreckers. $50.00 for all four? It's been a while.
Then I cleaned & painted those, installed the new bushings.
Makes for less down time. The bushings I installed were urethane. They were a bit of a bear to get into the control arms. Had to use a mondo huge press to get them in. That took more time than the control arm re-n-re.
Did new ball joints at the same time. Much easier on the bench than installing with the arms in the truck.
But after the bushings were in the arms, the job became a straight re-n-re of the arms.
If I had installed the bushings in the original arms, the truck would of been on the hoist for 2 days. I have to pay for that hoist time.
With the 2nd. set of arms already to install, the job was done in a couple of hours.

 

[michael hurd]

If you are installing polyurethane bushings, you will need to re-use the inner and outer as mentioned.

If you install rubber replacements from MOOG, Raybestos, and the like, you will not need to re-use your inner and outer sleeves.

On the other hand, if you don't have access to a press to do this, you might as well replace the entire control arm ( with bushings and ball joint ) to make life easier. ( $50-80 bucks at Rockauto )

 

[someotherguy]

If you have any control arm bushings that are bad, it's time to change all of them, as well as many other suspension wear parts too. When I did mine on my old '92 C1500 at 225K miles as you might imagine everything was toast. I did upper & lower control arm bushings, upper & lower ball joints, inner & outer tie rod ends, and did the tie rod adjuster sleeves too. Those don't need to be replaced in most cases but they're cheap and having them lets you set up the new tie rods to the same overall length as your old ones before install; makes getting to the alignment shop easier. Idler arm and possibly even pitman arm are suspect as well but very often people have already replaced the idler arm at least once or twice before the control arm bushings get bad enough to notice.

It's not a fun job but totally do-able by yourself if you've got any decent tool collection and skills. A bench mounted vise is pretty important, and a U-joint press comes in handy to help you drive out the old bushings and get the new ones in. It's like a big heavy duty C-clamp with a hex drive and some attachments. A shop style press could work, too. Drill press is very handy for getting the rivets out of the upper ball joint, way easier than trying to grind or air chisel the heads which is a pain. You'll need to rent/borrow a ball joint press for the lower ball joint.

Richard

 

[ViEJO_C1500]

thanks for the response guys. I recently rebuilt this truck to be a daily driver . in the past month, suspension wise, I did replace the front shocks. the truck is lowered with bell tech spindles (that's the way I got it) and rides smooth. I inspected the ball joints and other bushings and they all look newer with some life left. my passenger side upper control arm is squeaking really bad an is so annyoing I have to fix this asap. my local parts store has the control arm for $80. they also have the bushings for $25 for the set (stock style). I think I may just buy the bushings.