Front Lower Control Arms- Removing the Cam Sleeves

[Andy in Pa]

I am in the process of changing my lower control arms because the bushings are bad. I got everything apart, and was down to the point where I just had the LCA's hanging by the cam sleeves. I tried prying on them to get them loose (like the Tim the Toolman video shows), but just succeeded in popping off the cam washer on that side (front and backside of both LCA mounts). At this point, I decided to make a press out of 1/2" bolt about 6" long, and some large washers that the sleeve would slip through. I tried getting the sleeve to come loose with my impact gun, but it STILL would not come loose, so I had to use my 1/2" breaker bar with a pipe over the handle to increase leverage. This FINALLY popped the sleeve loose, and it started sliding out. I then switched to my impact, and was able to slide it to the point where the head of the 1/2" bolt touched the inner frame mount. At this point, I switched the bolt to a 3/8" x 6" bolt, because the 9/16's hex head of the bolt slips through, inside the bushing sleeve, and continues to pull the cam sleeve out. Using my impact, this worked perfectly. Not sure if it would work as well trying to use a ratchet, but most people have access to at least an electric impact gun these days.

Needless to say, I need a new set of cam sleeves to install my new arms, but living in the rust-belt, I should have just picked up a set anyway. Oh well, live and learn.

Hopefully this post can help someone else when they go to tackle removing the front lower control arms.

A.

 

[mtbtim]

Good job getting those frozen cam sleeves out but I don't know if your technique was any easier or quicker than just grabbing a reciprocating saw and cutting them out. When I came across my first set of frozen cam sleeves, we wailed on the them with a pry bar and hammer and then tried these pulling spindle rods out of my press sleeve kit to force them out but all we ended up doing was starting to bend the frame mounts so we abandoned that as well.

Here's a video showing how we cut a couple cam sleeves out on my 98 3rd Gen and then used a hydraulic press to get the bushings out.

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