Installing the BFI Dogbone Bushing

So the Blackforest Industries Dogbone Bushings came in Friday, roughly 3 days after I ordered them.

I decided to install them Saturday morning before a trip to Orlando.  I was expecting it to take about an hour and half.  It ended up taking 8 hours.

I jacked the car up and located the mount connected between the subframe on one end and the transmission on the other.  He is a pic of the mount after I jacked up the car.

Removing from car was simple and fast.  After which I needed to disassemble the mount, remove the old  bushings and replace with the new BFI Stage 2 bushings.  I knew it was important to visualize and remember the arrangement of all the parts that make up the Dogbone mount.  However, this is where everything went awry.  Here is the mount removed from car.

The pic above shows the orientation of how everything went together with the old black bushings.  Not shown is the bolt and plate that goes through the middle and compresses everything.  I wish I looked at this pic prior to trying to put the bushing back together twice and installing twice.  After I put the BFI Stage 2 bushings in, it was impossible to thread the bolt through the center without some sort of compression or vice...none of which I had.  So I had to make a trip to the hardware store to purchase a couple C-clamps and some blue tread locker.  The clamps helped and after about 30 mins I got the bolt to catch some threads and wrenched it down tight.  Slid under the car to re-install the dogbone to only quit after an hour.  I was unable to get the bolts to line up no matter how much i sissor jacked the front of the engine. (With the mount removed the engine swings down about 4 inches and must be "lifted" up while aligning all the holes for the 4 bolts)  I began to second guess my assembly on the dogbone and realized I swapped the bushings.  I had the large bushing where the small one was supposed to be and vice versa.  This meant disassembling the dogbone, swapping the orientation, then fighting again for 30 minutes with c-clamps to compress the mount and get the center bolt to catch a thread or 2.  Once I could get a couple threads, it was easy...just c-clamp the mount to my work bench and ratchet down on the bolt until snug.

So now I'm ready to bolt the mount up again, and after another hour of heaving, pushing and grunting I still cant get the center hole to align with mount for the bolt.  I enlist my neighbor for some extra hands to muscle the engine around.  After much strain and another hour passes, we get the difficult center bolt in and then the rest fell into place.  After everything was wrenched down, the mount just didn't look right or to be more specific, not "straight"...it's hard to explain, wish I took a pic.  I did however, review the pic I took of the mount prior to removal and quickly and quite angrily realized I had reversed a part of the dogbone when I assembled it.  When I removed all the pieces the 1st time, there was a ton of old black rubber residue on the insides of the housing where the bushings sat.  I spent some time getting all the old rubber out with a green scrubby.  Not paying attention I assembled it wrong, very wrong...see the pic on the left of the correct layout and the one on right that is wrong...the wrong layout caused the bushing to be longer then it was supposed to be and that was why it was so hard to get everything to align.

So, again I had to remove the dogbone from under the car, disassemble, and arrange the parts in the right order.  Again, taking over 30 mins to get it compressed enough to get the through bolt threaded.  This time thought the dogbone bolted up under the car much quicker and easier then the prior 2 tines ....well, no duh, it was finally right.  I was so angry with myself...a 1.5 hour job took 8 hours..grrrr.

I was 2 hours late for leaving for Orlando, so I only took it for a quick test drive around the area...nothing seemed to be out of whack...no wierd noises as I went through the gears aggressively.  I was expecting a lot of vibration and engine feedback throughout the once soft mount, but my initial and short impression was that there was no extra vibration....just smooth gear transitions.

I'll give more feedback as I road test it this week.