View Single Post
  #1  
Old 08-12-2006, 04:45 PM
lee polowczuk lee polowczuk is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Baton Rouge La
Posts: 2,632
Idler arm bushings w124

I had read a lot of threads on this issue and I finally got around to doing it on my sons car. I just want to add a few things.

We did the "cut off the head" bolt thing. I don't see any other way on a 300e. The pre-cat is in the way, and there is no way i wanted to mess with the exhaust system.

I had to loosen the steering piston (shock aborbober to get room). I also don't know how anyone could cut the bolt off manually with a hack saw or some such.

Our tool of choice was a Roto-zip. It was our tool of choice because it is all we had.. maybe some sort of Dremel would do the same thing. It took awhile to do this because you have to keep turning the bolt. There is very little clearance, so you can't go straight through with a Roto-zip wheel attachment.

Once the bolt comes out, the bushings are still sort of frozen up in there. Rather than messing around, I just took a torch and heated them up and they almost fell out.

We did clean up the inside of the cylinder..and applied some grease to the new bushings. They still wouldn't go in that easy, so we tight the new bolt to push them in. That was a piece of cake.

We did apply some blue Loc-tite to the thread end and put the bolt in "upside down".

While we didn't notice much of a difference in the steering just tooling around town, this job needed to be done in my opinion. The old bushings were probably the thickness of a CD disc or something close to that. Thiis past winter they were squeaking and we WD-40'd them to shut them up until I could do this job. For some reason, it took a leap of faith to do it.

I recently spent 500 dollars on new Michelins for this car, it will be aligned this week..and then i send my son and the car off to college.

It will be interesting to see if it needs any other rubber work immediately. I think we are ok. I didn't want to spend 100 or so for the tie-rod assembly because it seems ok. I hope the rear rubber is ok as well.. we have done some rubber work on the car in the past year.

Once again I don't think I could have done this without the Roto-zip.

Took us 2 1/2 hours... I think maybe I could knock off 30 minutes next time... maybe an hour..
__________________
1989 300ce 129k
( facelifted front,updated tail lights, lowered suspension,bilstein sports, lorinser front spoiler, MOMO steering wheel, remus exhaust,stainless steel brake lines). (Gone)

1997 s320 154k (what a ride). Sold with 179k miles. Replaced with Hyundai Equus

1994 e320 Cabriolet 108k



1972 280se 4.5 153k Owned for 12 yrs, sorry I sold it


[/SIGPIC]
Reply With Quote