996 lower control arm bushing replacement
 

I am new to this forum. I am updating my suspension on my 996 c4s and looking for tips on pressing out the lower control arm bushing so I can replace it with poly bushings. Have not found ant tech howto on this topic. Any suggestion?

Have you tried heat?

I will try. Was wondering if can press them out

The vids online use heat, which makes sense to me. I've done that with other cars - pressing against the center will probably just push the center and some rubber out, leaving the shell.

The shell itself is too thin to press out, so you might as well remove the center and rubber with careful application of fire, and then carefully slit the shell and remove it.

Heat on cast aluminum alloy will change the strength and mechanical properties of the control arm. Especially because control arm is a load bearing member of suspension.

There is a press tool available to do it correctly. Also, putting the new bushing in the freezer overnight will reduce the diameter sufficiently for the install.

How much heat is too much?

just past the change the alloy stage :)

The elephant tool looks nice, although it appears you could assemble something similar with standard cups/bearing tools


https://www.elephantracing.com/porsc...sion-bushings/

You definitely do not want to use heat. Not only can you damage the aluminum arm, but your can also damage the ball joint.

The best choice is to replace the arms with whatever units you want, that way you get new ball joints as well. The ball joints can also fail and then you are doing all of the press work over.

If you really want to save some coin and re-use your current arms, the thrust bushings need to be pressed out and the inner joint bushings need to be cut out.