does the perfromance pack come with Knuckle to Toe Link Bearing??

TNcoupe said:

Experiencing that right now. Strike 2 on changing mine out today. Ball joint press didnt work, homemade press didnt work, mine are stuck. Gonna have to pull the spindle and press them out. Anybody have a part number for the axle end nut at the spindle so I can replace them when I pull it?

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I give major props to anyone who did it under the car on jack stands with a clamp, as my attempt was a terrible experience. Having the rubber give way leaving the outer sleeve was so disheartening. For those who question whether or not the "free" bearing from the stock toe link will be usable after removal by a press just think about how resilient that stupid outer sleeve of that bushing was. A grenade MAY put a knick in it. I presume the same people made the bearing and it will be perfectly fine.

I installed the spherical bearings with my car on jackstands, in my garage. I made myself a tool to remove and install the bushings/bearings. It only took 5-10 minutes per side to do the job (not including jacking the car up, removing wheels and toe link to knuckle bolt, and reassembling eveything).

Below are some details on the setup I used. I talked my dad into dusting off his lathe to make the aluminum part, and the bearing, threaded rod, and nuts came from McMaster-Carr.

Yep^^

Bushing removal on the car is cake with the right tools. A C clamp won't do it. I've a slew of powerful tools like the above from my BMW projects - they'll make quick work of the toe and LCA bearings.

I tried it with 3/8" threaded rod and my ball joint removal tool pieces. The 3/8 rod just folded up like a cheap lawn chair. Will prolly try it with a 1/2" grade 8 bolt, if that doesnt work its coming off for the press.

TNcoupe said:

I tried it with 3/8" threaded rod and my ball joint removal tool pieces. The 3/8 rod just folded up like a cheap lawn chair. Will prolly try it with a 1/2" grade 8 bolt, if that doesnt work its coming off for the press.

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Yes. Purpose built bushing pullers use hardened steel rods with fine thread so as to provide greater leverage. They also (the expensive ones) use needle thrust bearings to eliminate all rotational friction, but that's not necessary.

A standard 3/8" coarse thread mild steel rod will taco as you've noted.

The threaded rod I used is grade 8 (150,00 psi vs hardware store threaded rod at about 50,000 psi). I also sprayed some "liquid wrench" at the seam between the bushing and knuckle and greased the thread Rod's threads.

mbeale68 said:

I installed the spherical bearings with my car on jackstands, in my garage. I made myself a tool to remove and install the bushings/bearings. It only took 5-10 minutes per side to do the job (not including jacking the car up, removing wheels and toe link to knuckle bolt, and reassembling eveything).

Below are some details on the setup I used. I talked my dad into dusting off his lathe to make the aluminum part, and the bearing, threaded rod, and nuts came from McMaster-Carr.

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That would have saved me a lot of heart ache.

Will this tool work for both the toe bearings and lower control arm bearings

mbeale68 said:

The threaded rod I used is grade 8 (150,00 psi vs hardware store threaded rod at about 50,000 psi). I also sprayed some "liquid wrench" at the seam between the bushing and knuckle and greased the thread Rod's threads.

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Excluding the actual r&r of the bushings/bearings, what process did you use to pull the arms out enough to get the tool around the bearings? It doesn't look like you can simply unbolt the front/rear inner pivots and let the arms hang down as the inner toe link connection is in the way.

I'm getting ready to tackle this soon and appreciate any input you might have.

EricSMG said:

Excluding the actual r&r of the bushings/bearings, what process did you use to pull the arms out enough to get the tool around the bearings? It doesn't look like you can simply unbolt the front/rear inner pivots and let the arms hang down as the inner toe link connection is in the way.

I'm getting ready to tackle this soon and appreciate any input you might have.

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Once you remove the toe rod you do have some wiggle room in the spindle which might just work if you have a transmission jack you can use to support the LCA. In our case we had removed the LCA to install springs. Made things super easy.

Oh, I'm afraid I've confused matters as I'm talking about the LCA bearings and not the toe knuckle bearings. The latter seems very easy to access while the former not so much.

Thanks either way, though.

EricSMG said:

Oh, I'm afraid I've confused matters as I'm talking about the LCA bearings and not the toe knuckle bearings. The latter seems very easy to access while the former not so much.

Thanks either way, though.

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Didn't catch that. I think the only viable solution is hydraulic shop press with LCA removed from the car. Really not that bad...took about 45 min per side for us to remove and then remount LCAs.

Just a tip, the spring goes in a lot easier if you only bolt up the front inner LCA bushing/spherical, mount the spring and then bolt up the inner rear. Gives you a little more wedgie room to slip the spring over the LCA and upper holders.

MtnBiker said:

Didn't catch that. I think the only viable solution is hydraulic shop press with LCA removed from the car. Really not that bad...took about 45 min per side for us to remove and then remount LCAs.

Just a tip, the spring goes in a lot easier if you only bolt up the front inner LCA bushing/spherical, mount the spring and then bolt up the inner rear. Gives you a little more wedgie room to slip the spring over the LCA and upper holders.

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Yes, that's the type of tip I'm looking for. Is this with the LCA bolted to the knuckle so that only the rear inner pivot is hanging free?

EricSMG said:

Yes, that's the type of tip I'm looking for. Is this with the LCA bolted to the knuckle so that only the rear inner pivot is hanging free?

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Nope. Not attached to the knuckle. We only had the inner/front LCA bushing attached (not torqued)....inner/rear and all the fronts hanging free. You'd need to be a little careful with your new spherical bearing so you don't bang metal stuff together...the bushing is stiff enough to keep that from happening. After mounting the spring we attached inner/rear bolt. After that, we used a transmission jack to support and lever the LCA as we bolted up the knuckle and vertical link. Pretty easy actually. Big parts, not a lot of finesse required. This is actually the Ford shop manual way of doing things vs dropping the sub-frame. You'd need to remove the LCA anyway so skip the sub-frame lowering and just go at it.

Another tip: immediately replace the bolts when removing stuff. There are a few bolts, the inner/rear and outer/rear in particular, that look almost the same. Easy to mess up and have weird suspension issues that are hard to diagnose. Make it look like this:

^^^ Yeah, after rear springs yesterday, I'm not dropping that subframe unless I absolutely have to. Was a PITA to get it back centered again.