Hi guys, thanks for the feedback. It's gratifying to know that my thread is still helping/inspiring people to work on their own cars.
I'm just getting back online after being under the sun in Cancun for a week, and am now awaiting the biggest predicted snow storm for the Denver area in over three years! Wish I could go back to the beach!
Hi Jim, I pulled the rear hubs off while the trailing arms were mounted in the car to help hold the trailing arms in place. Otherwise I would have had to wrestle with the large trailing arms in a vice, and didn't want to deal with that. For your second question, I guess you're replacing the bearings? If so, I would do both at the same time. I'm the kinda guy who likes symmetry, so I tend to replace things in pairs. In my particular case, I was approaching my project as a complete balanced overhaul, so I had planned to replace all of the "consumable" components while I was in there.
The rod bearing press tool is just a long 3/4" threaded rod with numerous thick washers. I used a closed end crescent wrench on one side, and either a socket wrench, or a closed end ratchet wrench on the other, with washers. When I couldn't get a wrench onto one end, I would use two nuts tightened together (locked) on the unreachable side, then two wrenches on the outer side (one to lock the whole deal down) and the other to tighten the active nut to press the components together.
The reason that the threaded rod is so long, is so that I could also use it to install the ER rubber bushings into my front control/A-arms. One tool to rule them all.
In the pictures shown, I was pressing the rear hubs onto the trailing arms. I actually utilized the (now unused) front strut covers to press the hubs on. Here's
THE LINK to that part of my project
I can understand trepidation at undertaking a project like this, but you can do it. Just take each project one at a time, keep a clean workshop and finish each micro project before moving on. If I tackled this project again, it would take me a couple of weeks instead of months. I move slowly and meticulously when doing new projects, and since this was the first 911 I've worked on, I really took my time to understand how it all works, and what's important.
Hope these answers help!
Cheers.