good afternoon youtube just received this shipment and these are our idler arm bushings so these are
bronze bushings that go in steering idler arms and i've showed you these idler arms and bushings in
an earlier video i'll put a link to that up here in the upper right corner we just ran
out of these so i put in an order for another 160 which is enough for 80 idler arm retrofits
so these parts are designed and manufactured in the us they do a really nice job for us
everything is really machined high precision and then they uh pack all these up so as is
these fit the older duralast or mcquay norris fa-504o idler arms and then we also modify them
to fit on the pro-forged idler arms and this is the model number there 102-1
there's two versions of this idler arm the older version has an l here and the newer version has no
lettering but it's got a hole for a grease fitting this is the newer model either arm
and what we have to modify is we trim down the thickness of the flange
the older idler arm that has the l on it we have to turn down the outer diameter of this
by about ten thousandths of an inch to reduce the diameter so it'll fit inside the housing so we're
supporting three different kinds of idler arms we have to take the raw bushing which fits one style
and we make one modification to fit one kind of idler arm and we make a different modification
to fit a different type so we're working on retrofitting another idler arm here with our
bronze bushings right there so these are the plastic bushings that come with the pro forged
idler arm and you can see how loose these bushings are compared to our bushings here in fact this one
there's so much paint or powder coating on this shaft that i can't even get this bushing on so
one thing i'm going to have to do is clean up this shaft with some sandpaper to remove the excess
paint you want a snug fit but you don't want to have to press this on so hard that you'll never
be able to get it off so the way this came from the factory you had this washer on here
that was tightened down on the shaft threads and then there was a nut that went in there
you can see how the nut was tightened down so hard that it deformed the washer and you can see it's
almost a cup shaped washer there if you use that cupped washer like that there's a good portion
of the bushing that's not being contacted by the washer you're just riding right on
the very center there and not putting the clamping force over the whole face of the bushing
you could flip it over but then you're just going to be riding on the outside of the bushing and
not on the insides you could flatten that out and that will help a bit but you can see that's a soft
steel washer it's not hardened or anything so the other problem with this washer is it's kind of a
tight fit you know now that it's been deformed a little bit but it it spins on there so we had a
customer recently named andrew and he had a really good suggestion what he had done was he took this
washer and flattened it out and then actually went through the process of lapping this flat on a
piece of sandpaper and then he put the nut on and then used a welder and put like three tack welds
to weld the nut and washer together so that they would move as a hole so if the
washer gets stuck to the bushing you're going to have the nut moving on the washer so you'll have a
steel on steel friction versus a steel on plastic or bronze so he had the really neat idea that
perhaps we could find a flange nut so this nut has a heavy hardened steel flange and it's very smooth
and so when you tighten that down on the bushing now the flange and the nut move together
because they're one piece so we also ship a thin jam nut that can go on the end of the shaft and
then you can lock these two nuts together holding the large nut and then tightening the jam nut
until it locks you could also apply some thread locking compound on the nut if you wanted to do
it that way anyway we're going to try putting one of these together with these flange nuts and see
how that works this one the housing is a nice fit on this bushing sometimes there's a little extra
paint or powder coating inside the housing that you have to remove so yeah let me clean up the
shaft with some sandpaper and then we'll show fitting the bushings on there because right now
it won't go in there i think they probably either paint or powder coat these hanging upside down
and sometimes you get extra paint down here on the end so i'm just going to sand that off takes
a few minutes to clean it up and you just keep going until the bushing slides in fairly easily
and the way i clean it up is i just have a block with some sandpaper on it
and just go around and around it hasn't been taken down completely to bare metal but
just enough can slide the bushing down you can see this end i haven't touched the paint much at all
and that one's fine it's just up here get a little extra paint so one thing is if you're going to use
a thread locker on here you want to make sure the threads are clean because you get grease on
there when you take them apart and put them back together clean them off good now and then when you
put everything back together you're going to get some grease on the threads as you shove it through
so make sure to wipe the threads clean maybe even use some acetone or isopropyl alcohol and
clean those threads off because the thread locker needs clean threads to seal if you're going to use
the jam nut and the regular nut you don't really have to worry about getting the thread super clean
okay youtube so i applied a little bit of grease inside the housing and then slid the two bushings
in so then the other thing i like to do is put a little bit of grease on the faces here
because your arm is going to be rubbing down here that's on this end is the base of the arm
so now here's the flange nut so you're just gonna screw that on this nut is built to be
kind of a lock nut it's got slightly deformed threads it'll tend to stay tight by itself
so you can see now the nut and the flange are rotating and the bushing is staying
still so the bushing is doing its job all the friction is between the washer
and the bushing and then inside it's the shaft and the bushing so the bushing sits still inside the
housing and then the whole shaft nut and washer move inside the bushings and then you can see
we couldn't use a lock nut there because there's not enough thread left yeah so at this point you
have the two options one is you could have applied some thread locking compound like red or blue
loctite to the threads before you screwed the nut on or you can use this jam nut here
so that's just a thin nut that's going to be tightened
over the end here get your desired tightness here and then you're going to tighten this jam nut
and that'll jam against this flange nut and then keep them from loosening up the original setup
you can see how the nut has moved on the washer and left that circle there
so yeah thank you andrew for the suggestion i think those nuts are going to work out well
basically at the end after we've put the bushings in we give you the old nut and washer we give you
the original bushings and then there's also the the grease fitting here that goes in there
and the cotter pin and then we put the cap back on but we don't put it on fully
because one thing you probably want to do is install this on your truck so you're going to
bolt this to the frame on the passenger side you're going to hook this up to the steering
and then you're going to want to cycle the steering back and forth a few times and
and get this thing moving the tires and pushing and pulling and twisting you know
doing whatever it's going to do and then check the tightness here we basically just put the nut on
just so it's there and then we we put the cap on just loosely so that you can take it off make any
adjustments if you need to if you want to do thread locking compound we just basically put
it in place to make sure everything's going to move we give you the cap back like that
we give you the original parts you're still going to have to install this on your truck
and then it's a good idea to run the steering through a few cycles and maybe even drive it a
bit and then check these nuts and also check the bolts through the frame make sure they're still
tight but also check this one you know there might have been a little bit of paint that wore off
on either end so anyway yeah that's our new setup with the flange nut and then a jam nut and the
bronze bushings so yeah one of the things we do on the pro forged bushings is we thin the flange
of the bushing so these are the original pro forged bushings and these flanges are about two
millimeters thick so we set the bronze bushings up and shave down the flange until it's similar
thickness to the original bushings so instead of having the stock washer that domes out when you
tighten it down you now have a flange nut that's all one piece and it's solid forged steel instead
of a stamped sheet metal washer and a regular lock nuts yeah there's our new setup so yeah
if you have any other questions about the idler arms post up in the comment section below i'll put
a link to our web page that has all the contact details and all the technical information on these
installation notes and the whole nine yards check that out and as always thanks for
watching