1989 Phazer: How can I separate the front arms? Bushings appear rusted...

R

RHodgins

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I want to separate the front arms on my 1989 Phazer to add washers and tighten the steering play. Got the ski off easy. (parts 44&45 on the Partzilla Ski exploded view for that year).
When I try to back out the bolt the head stay in contact with one half of the shackle and tries to force the other half off the bolt by bending it outward. Pretty sure the inner bushing is rusted to the bolt trapping it. Of the tthree bolt on the two pivotting arms I only managed to get the bottom one off. Top two have the problem.

Is heat the answer? Days of hitting it with penetrating fluid? Any thoughts? I can't be the first to encounter this.
Thanks in advance.
R
 
RHodgins said:
I want to separate the front arms on my 1989 Phazer to add washers and tighten the steering play. Got the ski off easy. (parts 44&45 on the Partzilla Ski exploded view for that year).
When I try to back out the bolt the head stay in contact with one half of the shackle and tries to force the other half off the bolt by bending it outward. Pretty sure the inner bushing is rusted to the bolt trapping it. Of the tthree bolt on the two pivotting arms I only managed to get the bottom one off. Top two have the problem.

Is heat the answer? Days of hitting it with penetrating fluid? Any thoughts? I can't be the first to encounter this.
Thanks in advance.
R
Click to expand...
try heat, but if that doesn't work, then put the thinnest cutting blade on a grinder or air power cutting tool, and grind through in between the arms. Then get new bolts.
Another idea would be to carefully use air hammer to help break free.
 
i did a vk540 III that was seized like you describe. here is a link to that thread.

Maim

Thread '2010 vk540 III overhaul'

A friend of mine who I hunt with and help with trapping had an issue with his vk. We both knew the previous owner and that he was having issues with the pto cylinder flooding out the spark plug. Was advised coil was bad. Replaced and did not make a difference. Anti fouling plugs helped but just kept getting worse. Finally took it in for compression test. Mag side, 120 psi. Pto side 10 psi. As he could not use the sled, I picked it up in late October but it got put on back burner until my sleds got serviced. Owner was ok with that. I got to it just before Christmas of 2021. Tore the engine...
 
@Maim Hey Thanks for the link. One question regarding your method. You show a zip gun. Did you just have it pin it against the outside of the shackle peg the trigger hoping to dislodge the internals through the vibration? No torqueing on the bolt while hammering away?

Also I'm hoping to take some slack in the tie rods of the steering linkage. Unbolt, turn in one rotation and check slop. Is that pretty much it?
 
i will deal with slop 1st. with the way the tss play works out, i put the bungee cord on the back of the ski and set it to around 1/8" toed out to square measuring to the front and rear studs on the wear bars/carbides. bungee pulls out all the slack and usually makes it so that it should not need adjustment for quite awhile.

as to the zip gun/air hammer, i was using it on the end of the bolts with a nut on to get them moving. all of them turned the sleeve inside the bushings but the bolt was sezied to the sleeves. i cut off the nut end of the bolt and then used a sawzall to cut that side of the tss scisors off so i could zip gun all the parts off the sled. the one ski one would not move with the husky .401 shank air hammer but it did rotate. i use cp .499 air hammers at work and they hit over 2x as hard as most .401 ones. it did not move until i heated it 2x with the heat gun. i scrapped everything that came off the sled and put used from my parts pile.

i work on class 8 trucks that spend more time off road and learned how to deal with seized crap on those and how to save it. vibration doesn't usually work on that stuff as it shakes all day anyways.
 
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