Has anyone ever removed there wheel well plastic shield to work on their front suspension I’m thinking of doing this to replace my front bushings.

Is it easy or worth doing?

Was it easy to find replacement plastic pop rivets to put it back?

Any suggestions hints on doing this


Thanks 98DAKAZ

 

There are some push tabs things around it to pop the inner shield out. Does make it easier, but can be a pain to get back in right.



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My shields covers up the back bolts for the top A-arm removal almost no room at all but the front has tons of room I could just get to them from the top through the engine bay on the passenger side but on the divers side all the ABS brake crap is in the way kind of sucks

I will get some pic's in a few

 

This is my passenger side

Shield is covering everything at back of shield



The same side but you can see the front is ok easy getting to the bolts



This is same side looking down into the engine bay tight but ok

Wow one of my foam shields came off hum need to grab that.




Drivers side back of shield no room to work



same side front with lots of room



same side looking through the front of engine bay decent room

 

As you can see these bushings are needing replacedment.

 

Well I decided to remove them I grabbed me a box of rivets and I’m ready to go.

$7 a box of 50

 

when i did my bushings i just worked around it. a pain in the rear, but not impossible. if i ever do it again i'll definitely remove it.

 

Good job, I was gonna say just rip the friggin thing out because 14 year old rivets are just bound to give you trouble. I took my passenger one off when replacing the CPK(s?) and it was more trouble trying to put them back in cause they were so worn.

 

This is strange I decided to get all the big side bushing nuts lose on my top control arms just to test how hard they may be today and they were loose unless I just gained super human strength just a little tugging and they came loose with ease. Even one of the bushings looked like it was coming out with extracting the big nut that kind of freaked me out.

I tested the bottom ones also and they were the same very easy to turn off.

These are torqued on with some force like 130 lb of torque.

Would this be normal after 14 years?

 

Removing the wheel well shield is a great thing to do if you need to work on your suspension like replacing your control arm bushings.


Worked great makes the job way easier you can get too everything with ease.