Has anyone changed there lower control arm bushes before?

[benny_mac]

What i have in my yard is an au1 ex taxi which i'm fixing for a guy at work, it had a squeak and a knock, upon further inspection i found all lower control arm bushes were worn both ball joints, sway bar link and swaybar bushes were rooted too. With the press at work semi-rooted i went done to peddars and asked if i supply the control armes and bushes how much for them to press them out and back in, there reply was $120 or we could do the control arm bushes for you drive in drive out for $500. I thought that was really steep so i said thank you very much and walked out but thinking thats probably a good figure to charge to do everything above including parts. So i set about getting the bushes and ball joints out of the lower control arm, the ball joints were fairly easy as they were just splined like a wheel stud but those bushes were just........ AAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!!!!. I managed to them out after about 3 hours with a porta power and an air chiseil but what a time consuming and messy job that i will never ever do again....... EVER! But to add to that, Outer lower control arm bushes - $77ea, inner control arm bushes - $50ea, sway bar link bushes - $30, 28mm sway bar bushes - $22 for both and ball joints were $17 each. so theres roughly $340 in parts, i've charged $500 to do the whole lot which means for $160 i'm doing about 6 - 7 hours of labour and also a minor service to this car : Ahh well my fault for not reserching the job first but on a lighter side to put them back in i just chucked the bushes in the freezer for a day and the arms in front of the heater and with plenty of never-cease they practically fell in thank god.

Sorry for the long post but i just had to tell someone about how crap of a job that was and that next time i will happily pay peddars to press them out and in again.

Benny Mac