--February 20th, 2006--(Continued)*

Okay, so for the tear down we begin with the diff on the floor. I didn't have any thick plastic so I just put down an old shirt. This did the job for me with minimal clean up afterwards.

First things first, bang out the half shafts. In the pic below it looks like I am hitting the ring gear, but not so...carefully bang these suckers out evenly on all three tabs. It also helps to label them as you can see with the large yellow markings. Paint markers work the best.

As you can see...there it goes.

Then take out the rubber seals. I used that big ass pry bar and them came out like butter...be careful to only get the rubber though. You do have enough space to get under metal too! After those are out...take out the bearing caps.

Another good reason for taking pics...to remember how things are before you disrupt them. Notice the shims to the left and right of the bearings on the same sides. One skinny one fat on the left, and one skinny on the right. Good thing for pics...might be a few days before welding and then I can get it back together.

So in this pic...I thought this would look tasteful. And it does. I didn't actually taste it though.

Fully disassembled and thankful. Now onto the fun part...or so I thought.

So next thing on my to do list for today. Remove the old worn out subframe bushings. I have talked to a few people and they all said...burn them out. Well, lets try it.

So I took out my two torches and lit em up. The only problem...they are super thick and neither of my torches get hot enough to REALLY lite em up. But it was fun anyway.

So after a good minute of burning them away....my neighbor came over. He says 'Man, I wondered what that foul ass smell was."

Haha...yeah, good thing he is cool. I told him what I was told about just burning it out and he says..."Nah, dude they have a metal sleeve and need to be pressed out."

Ahh...crap. So for all you out there that think you can just burn them out...you can, but you still have to removed the metal sleeve too. I guess I could have cut them out with a sawzall. Either way, we pounded them out, but first....this is where we where after burning. Just a dirtier, smellier work area.

So my buddy Jake has a good idea after pounding on em for a second and we set it up like this. I stood on the cross section and put tension/weight on it. This with the jackstands supporting from the bottom made a perfect "hoist" to allow pounding the last two lower ones out.

So here is the demolished stock subframe bushings.

These things were really in there. I guess it is good though, and they are stock...13 maybe 14 years old. We just kept spraying them with lubricant and using a BFH with a chisel. The bushings have a lip on one side and you can use this to push em out just like we did. They only come out in one direction. As you can tell...he destroyed them. Go Jake!! HAHAHA!

The subframe mounts ended up with a few dings and dents, but nothing to affect the new ones. I can just take a round wheel to it and smooth out the imperfection and they should be just fine.

And now....finally. Finished for the day. The subframe is ready for cleaning and powdercoat. The diff is being taken to a reputable welder. I am highly considering cryotreating the axles too since they are spares and I wont have any down time.

The rest of the parts I will probably have box welded and sell on ebay or something.

And now...one of my most current pics.