MX5 MK3 Suspension Bushes

[glenmore3685]

Hi

During my Mk3's service the garage advised that the following bushes were on their way out and require replacement soon:

Rear front upper inner bushes

Front shock lower mount bushes

My wife dropped and collected the car so I didn't get a chance to ask the garage but can anyone confirm if these are straightforward to replace (ie could I do them myself)? Also I've tried to find these bushes online but I can only seem to find polybushes which I don't want - I can't seem to find original ones anywhere.

Thanks in advance for any information on this.

[Perseverant]

Not sure about original bushes, but fitting new ones is fairly straightforward. The pain and grief tends to be in removing the bits. I rebushed the front of our previous MX5 and had to cut all the bolts - very tedious. The old bushes can be pushed out with the aid of sockets and a blowlamp using a decent sized vice to do the pushing. The polybushes I used fitted easily - squash them in with the centre metal removed and push it in after.
I'm replying to this because I had a horrible day yesterday doing a bottom balljoint and to access the bolt which is almost under the bottom of the shock, the shock has to undo at the bottom, which needless to say was seized solid. Since the Bilstein units looked all right I cleaned them up and painted them and sourced new bushes from MX5 Parts. I hate watching clips on You Tube usually based in the US where everything comes apart so easily! Good luck.

[SlowcoachIII]

Thread revival after a quite a while so assumed you got it sorted...I’m in a similar situation regarding some of the bushes on my vehicle and would prefer rubber. Did you manage to find the rubber bushes?

[glenmore3685]

I ended up taking it to another garage who said they were fine and ended up selling the car a year ago.

[Evoluzione]

You can't buy rubber bushes, just the complete arm or poly bushes. The reason being the bush is bonded to the arm when it's made or it's in a zinc plated sleeve which becomes bonded to the arm and needs cutting out.
Some associated info here: http://www.duratecnc.co.uk/?p=439