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Did you have to drop the rear side of the sub-frame? If you did, did the motor move much at all? I mean I just need 1" of space to get a wrench in there.
I heard it's possible to get to the rear bolts of the bushing bracket using a 10mm ratcheting wrench with a swivel head?
im here right now, got front out, subframe rear holding on by a thread and i was told you dont have to drop it, just lower, but that rear bolt is even harder to access. will update you on what i did, im just going slow, couldnt find any diy with pict or vids so rather not mess up anything srious
Last edited by polish_pat; 04-09-2016 at 07:46 PM.
I heard here that you don't even have to lower the rear of the subframe, the rear bolt will loosen enough for you to swing out the bracket to remove the rubber bushings. Let me know if you are able to do that.
I heard here that you don't even have to lower the rear of the subframe, the rear bolt will loosen enough for you to swing out the bracket to remove the rubber bushings. Let me know if you are able to do that.
Nop Not true. the rear bolt actually gets harder to get to when you just lower the frame and keep bolts on. As you unscrew, you see the frame getting lower, but the gap between the bracket and wall gets smaller as they are both at a certain angle. The only way to get to it is to lower it enough for the bracket to clear. In the picture, the top yellow line is the top of bracket, bottom yellow is where you're clear. The top has to be lowered below the bottom.
I had a glimmer of hope when i saw i had less clearance from the top but the bottom actually had opened up a bit, so i cut a piece of the bushing and tried to fit the smallest 14mm socket i had on u-joint, but after like 20 mins i gave up, there is just no way to turn that and position it on bolt.
Finally, and i should have done this first, i saw my replacement bushing had thicker walls and was also slightly bigger so the bar would be tigheter and the bracket would have a better hold. So i just took a crobar and bend the backet enough for the raised side of bushing to clear it and cut the bushing on the other side of the opening. From that point, took me 15 minutes and i was testdriving it.
i tried to do it the right way, too much hassle, a lot less wasted headaches with that rear bolt and cut the bushing
So you did lower the rear of the subframe? Did you have to do anything up top or front? The entire front sub frame is bolted up with 4 main bolts. Or you just loosened the rear 2 bolts and let it lower under its own weight then support it with a jack stand or a hydraulic jack while you work? thanks so much.
I did nothing of that. Like I said, I started with trying to lower the subframe, when i saw the opposite effect happeneing, i decide to give the redneck method a shot, which is bending the brackets.
This probably took a lot more time than unscrewing the subframe, but somehow i dont feel like playing around with subframe is a very good thing for a home mecanic. The only 2 things i can say, grease the crap out of your new bushings before putting them back, and find a way to bend back the brackets before you put the bushings, because that bracket + the lack of work space make a very stressful repair in perspective. One side took me 3 hours, once i got that figures, the other side took less than 15 minutes.
03-19-2016, 07:58 PM
