bushings are a bitch

The front suspension on this car is a strut type with a lower arm. I am replacing all of the rubber and joints in the front suspension. The front "A" arm bushing is a royal bitch to get out, but thanks to a little ingenuity, not as bad going in. The bushing if force fit into a metal sleeve and removing the bushing without damaging the sleeve was a little tricky. Since it is hard rubber I ended up using a drill and putting a half dozen or so holes into rubber. After enough holes were in there, I was able to start rotating the whole bushing. Then came the fun part, beating the hell out of it with a hammer until the bushing was most of the way out, then a few good twists and out it popped. I was so glad to get it out after drilling and twisting and beating for the better part of an hour that I just had to laugh at myself when I pulled out the new one and realized that it had the same problem only in reverse. The new bushing as the old one did, has a lip at either end preventing it from just coming out. This also prevents it from going in.....
A gear puller, a can of WD40 and 5 minutes later it's all over.

Brakes...

The front brakes	The rear brakes

Time for the brakes. I got the new rotors and pads in this week and did the rear brakes last night. Only one small problem crept in, the parking brake lever on the driver side caliper is stuck and doing the piston retraction took much more effort than on the passenger side. I'm probably just going to get rebuilt calipers since everything else was beat to hell on this car. I picked up some caliper paint so I'll be doing a little "beautificaiton" along the way.