UCA Bushings
 

I am thinking about replacing the rubber bushings of the upper control arm on my 84D.

Anyone done this yet? What are the symptoms of badly worn bushings?

Camber adjustment range is exceeded. Front tires wear on the inside edge due to nevative camber resulting from sagging bushings.

Unless your upper ball joints are in extremely good shape, it's probably more cost effective to replace the entire UCA.

I am replacing my UCAs next week, if I get this Altima done. I have wear on the outside edge of my tires, but I'm sure it's an alignment. I'm not getting the alignment done until I replace the UCA's One thing leads to another.

Agreed.

Just did this for a friend's 300D last week. Upper ball joints were great, he spent 10 bucks per side on the bushings. Very easy to put in. Very cost effective.
-Popped out the ball joint
-took out the inner bolt
-left the control arm on the sway bar.
-with a little muscle flip the control arm upside down
-remove the old bushing
-clean bushing seating area
-install bushing by pressing it in with a "c" clamp and large sockets on the ends for better surface area to clamp down.
-flip it back to original position and muscle/pry it into place.
-install inner bolt. Note: passenger side has little room to work on because of the battery and getting the bolt hole aligned can be a pain.
-install ball joint back to the top of the steering knuckle.

And your done!

I was going to take some pics, but decided not too because we were working so fast.

"Cheap" and "cost effective" are not synonymous. A $10 UCA bushing set is probably not worth installing.

My brother's 300D needs at least one and probably both upper control arms soon....the Lemforder ones are a whole $48 each online.....that's cheap!

My 300SD could use them too....

Symptoms of wear are clunking.....and being able move the wheel in and out when pulling on it. :eek: On the 300D you can actually see the ball joint shifting around in the socket. :eek: Probably not a good thing....

How could $48 be more cost effective than $10 per side????

My tire wear is ok. I'm getting one or 2 mild "thunk" sound coming from the left or right side when I turned. I don't think its from the steering linkage. It seemed to have started after I changed the tie rod ends. Strange:confused:

Eyeballing the UCA bushings, it looks frayed. Wonder if its loose inside. The UCA itself seems to look fine.

Only a graduate of the Bernie Madoff School of Accounting would buy the $10 figure. $10 per inner bushing, maybe. That's $20 per side. (If anyone can provide a source for good quality bushings at $5 each, let me know.)

The problem with piecemeal front end work is that money saved in parts is spent in additional alignments.

My money says that a UCA old enough to wear out the bushings is old enough to have a worn ball joint, regardless of how wonderful the UCA itself might appear.

Not trying to scare you away from this project, but being from NE Ohio, and seeing that your climate is very similar, be prepared for MUCH frustration in removing that top bolt. MUCH frustration.

I always go at it with an open mind and a vicious wrench. :D

... and a sawzall ...

What top bolt? the one that holds the UCA to the body? No sweat. Been there - done that. I also have the OTC 7315 for removing the balljoint bolt.

So far I've been able to get by with just a dremel. :eek: (and very infrequent use of an angle grinder....)

If there is no labor cost and you have the time to do it you will save as a new UCA is 2-3 times more.
Removing the UCA is the more labor intensive part of the job; compared to changing the bushing.

On the other hand you could put in 1-2 hours; (depending on how much you get paid at work) of overtime where you work and buy the New UCAs.

My own thought was to buy a whole front end kit for around $255 so I would have everthing I needed incase I found some unexpected problems.
As it turned out I had one UCA with a floppy Ball Joint and seriously rotted out LCA bushings and I also found the bore in the LCAs were rusted so bad that after I removed the rust the bores were oversized.
So you just do not know what you will find.

Also the FSM has a test for the Ball Joints where you screw a rod of a certain length into the joint an pivot it. If there is reasonable tension on the Joint it is OK.