Death Sway, trailing arm bushings

[tcschweitzer]

My Qx4 has death sway, when i hit gas the car wobbles and jogs to the right, when I let off the gas, the car dodges back to a straight line. Around town its not a big deal, but on the hwy, this can send the car into a death sway back and forth.

I've had the car looked at mutliple times and everybody say the suspension looks fine. FINALLY, someone at a tire place said I needed to replace the trailing arms. They quoted me $506 per arm. Yikes!! I asked them if they would just replace the bushings and they told me that wasn't standard procedure for my vehicle.

I did some research and found that the bushings cost about $15 online.

Looks like i'm going to tackle this DIY. Everything from the service manaul looks simple except for removing and pressing in the new bushings. I was thinking I could just remove them and have my local mom and pop mechanic press in the new bushings. ANy ideas on what they would charge me to do that? I assume it wouldnt take them more than a hour for all 4 bushings.

I don't want to get ripped off - this is not my daily driver, but i do need it to pass a safety inspection soon.

[Chuck Tribolet]

What year Qx4?

First there are four trailing arms, upper and lower, each with two bushings, for a total eight.

My local mom-pop garage charges me $20-25 per arm to press the old bushings out and new ones in.

You can also go with polyurethane bushings.

Getting the old arms out can be hard. The first time I did the uppers, it took Ingersol-Rand's baddest 1/2"
impact wrench to get three out of four bolts out. The fourth had to be cut out.

FSM say replace the nuts and bolts when replacing the bushings.

[fleurys]

it`s a good 3 hour job with all the right tools...