Great job. Those suspension components look fantastic. I have a similar Manta A over here in England. My car is also in really good body condition having spent half its life in Italy. My car is a 1971 Manta 1.6S in silver - with red interior. I'm going to neeed to tackle suspension bushes on my car at some point. I was lucky enough to find some NOS rear trailing arm bushes. Thanks for sharing the video. It's really helpful to other Opel owners. And good luck with your car. It looks fantastic!
I'm really enjoying this series, just found it this morning! I changed all the rubber suspension bushings for poly in my 95 Camaro a few years ago. I used a torch to heat up the inner bushing sleeves to release the vulcanized bond. I put the flame of the torch inside the sleeve and heated it until it was smoking real good! Then, the bushing just pushed out with a same size socket. did the same to remove the remaining bushing material from the shell, by heating the shell. Popped right out. There are You Tube videos how to do this. There are a couple of videos with guys burning the bushings out with fire! No need to do that, just heat them enough to release the vulcanized bond. Saves a lot of time and effort. Looking forward to see what's next on your project! Keep cruisin'!
Thanks, glad you're enjoying it! The heat idea is good. I don't have a torch currently but if I do something like this again, I'll definitely keep that in mind!
Quite a job so far, you must be bushed! But seriously, again nice to have the process documented here. Have my '74 Luxus and '75 Wagon in the lineup. Purchase two of everything when Opel shopping, except transmissions as one is auto, one 5 speed. I have the red poly sets from Opel GT source and not sure of sleeve saving, or sacrifice. IIRC, installing tension fit bushings, ball joints requires support of stamped parts like the arms, etc. by placing a socket or such next to where it will go, or in between flanges so they don't bend as you press. When all done, will you be able to straight compare before-after like a timed run down same road? Sorry for the novel, great work!
Thanks! Definitely a lot of work, but I'm taking my time (as you can probably tell by the frequency of these videos) and working on it when I feel motivated. That's a good note on supporting the stamped steel parts, I did notice a little bit of squishing happening as I was pressing out some of the old bushings. Hoping things didn't move enough to matter. As for a before/after comparison, I don't have any scientific way to test that, but I'll film my reaction the first time I drive it, and probably try to get some exterior footage on a windy road to compare the body roll to how it was before. Considering how bouncy and wayward it was before with dead shocks, I'm sure the difference will be pretty big.
@@AndrewDoesCarStuff Utilize earlier footage (all great stuff) by duplicating the drives closely (same road, etc.) and bet we will see the improvement! Would be neat if split screen was possible. All the work will be worthwhile, like a new car. And thanks for advice on HF puller kit - nice.
![Restoring Rusty Control Arms & Removing Old Ball Joints & Bushings - Opel Manta A Suspension [EP. 3]](/img/logo.svg){kind=logo}
