Bon,
Great tips. Yes drilling creates gummy rubber and can't be preformed in one pass. I would turn the arm over to tap out the shaving build up, let it cool or switch sides. Yes, the gap in the bushing pair was used as a grease reservoir. Fill it up.

*************

Everyone, I just got a PM with an excellant question relevant to everyone, so here is the public response.

Question: What symptoms were you experiencing that prompted you to replace the bushings?

The answer is slightly more complicated than the question. Some car problems occur suddenly, but suspension degradation will likely sneek up on you so slowly that you may not notice until one day you decide you don't like the way the car feels, then it will seem like the problem suddenly appeared and it will bother you incessantly. The GS makes this mental trigger a little more abrupt because the new, stock suspension and steering is so controlled and precise in premium Japanese-car style. Without the original high bar, one might dismiss the feeling, but instead you say "Hey, this can't be right".

A couple years ago, The Queen and I noticed that the chassis had a sublte uncontrolled wiggle when driven straight, and did not settle immediately with steering input. Contrary to intuition, you will notice this more when driving slowly through the neighborhood at one-tenth rather than driving autocross at nine-tenths. Our first action was KYB shocks and the Daizen sway bar bushing kit, both sourced through TM Engineering (no affiliation, yada-yada). This had affect, maybe took care of 90%. What's left would be below most peoples perception, but like that tiny little whine that only you can hear, its now on your mind because you now know what to look for AND because you've spent money to make it perfect.

Now, fast forward to about two months ago. QueensRide was at the dealer for the hvac blower control and, unsolicited, we were presented with The Scare List which included timing belt service and ball joints. I took care of hvac and timing belt. I could not at all verify "ball joint VERY LOOSE", but decided to do a preventative swap out just in case the dealer is both honest (lol) and smarter than I am. The dealer had done psychic damage because now I could not dismiss the infamous freeway speed steering vibration. Is it just tire imbalance or AM I GONNA DIE? Then I get on ClubLexus and start reading about the on-center dead space, and suddenly, my car has the on-center dead space. Sorry, now yours does too. Along with the vibration. And the wiggle.

So, the ball joints get replaced. Now, if you take the GS off line to replace the lower ball joint, does it make sense to replace other degradable suspension parts all at the same time? In my case, The Queen would rather spend time and money once. Conversely if time and money is spent, I look bad if the 60mph vibration and steering imprecision is still there or if the suspension wiggle comes back. To go after the vibration & imprecision and eliminate the risk of wiggle re-occurance, I decided to swap out 12 year old rubber.

The next question is, new factory rubber or after-market urethane? I splurged on Daizen because it was the non-rubber solution and because I was curious about where it might send the car. Turns out the oem rubber was cracking slightly, but not much. It's difficult to say about how far compliance had gone away, but the question is, how far the compliance will have gone away in another five or ten years. afaik, urethane will eliminate future degradation also.

The Daizen steering bushings were brought in using the same "do it once" objective. Turns out that the new bushings brought the vibration down to a tenth of the before, but its still present if you know what to look for (and you will). Probably was tire imbalance that created harmonics that overwhelmed the old rubber's damping ability. Whether, its the bushing kit, the steering kit, or the alignment...can't say.

So now QueensRide has KYB GR2, several Daizen bushing kits (front, steering, sway) and a fresh alignment. Otherwise, factory.

The big surprise was the affect of alignment on suspension/steering. Just by itself, "toe" being off spec by just 1 degree had an effect over twice as bad as the original wiggle & dead-space.

Good question.

 

got my kit in the mail today. Wondering if I should use my 7.62 rifle to shoot the caster bushing out

 

Great DIY post! Time to get mine done.

 

Great idea! If i were you i'd just grab a 12 GA and blow that sucker out with a few rounds...

 

Too bad I don't have a press, I wonder what the shop would charge me to get these out and in...

 

way off topic but here you go kids....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7091904.stm

 

LOL. Darwinisim at it's finest!

 

I only used a press for the two LCA#2 bushings. It didn't take two minutes to press them in; really no big deal at all. The rest of the new bushings just press in by hand. The old bushings are just hand work with hammer, chisel and saw after using the drill press method.

By the way I used a 1.5" hole saw to remove the bushings.