Took a little bit of time today to press out the old bushings on my lower control arms. I don't have a press so I used the old bottle jack and heat method.



I applied very little pressure and a s***ton of heat. The first one came out like butter and the second one took a little more pressure but came out too. As I was getting ready to push my new bushings in I noticed that one of the welds on the control arm had bent.

I measured the inside diameter of the other side and compared it to the one that I pressed and noticed it was off by a whopping 1/4"!

So DON'T do this with crappy aftermarket lower control arms. Have them pressed out professionally or buy some used OEM ones. I was sick of messing with this so I bought OEM lowers with bushings already installed. While it hurt the wallet I feel WAY better about the quality of it over my old ones - definitely way heavier.

Here you can see how bent the other one is:



With the new lowers I was able to get them slapped in and set the camber decently. It'll be towed to the alignment shop but I think this finally wraps up my front end rebuild. Look at all these nice shiny parts in there!



Really looking forward to seeing how well it drives now. It was extremely sketchy before with the bump steer so bad a pothole would send me in the other lane!

I also found some old pictures of the truck and I on some adventures:






And one when I got it stock in 2013 - minus the running boards of course.