Recon Silver bushing replacement part 1: removal

My trusty RockShox Recon Silver had one broken bushing as shown in my previous post. I believed that the bushings could not be changed as 2011 Recon (Silver) manual says so, but then I heard that they could be replaced and looked into 2013 manual which did not contain the info, that lower legs should be replaced after bushing wear.

I then tried to reason between running it with the broken bushing until it breaks, taking it to local shop for bushing replacement or buying new bushing and trying to fix it by myself.

The little engineer/mechanic in me took over and soon I was googling how the bushing could be replaced. I finally found a post on mtbr.com forums that had some good stuff written by username bad mechanic . So I ordered new 32mm bushings and started gathering materials for the tools.

M12 washer seemed to be properly oversized to make the extractor tool.

After several stages, including  rotating the bushing in a drill and pressing it against a file (reduce circumference), dremeling and filing, I finally had a part that could slide through the bushings while attached to a M12 threaded rod.

I then assembled the whole tool and started to remove the bushings.

I first removed the top bushing that was in level with the foam ring space. The tool inserted nicely, but the bushing was pretty tight and the removal required attaching the tool to a vise and hammering the fork down with a plastic mallet.

The lower leg had some oxidization under the bushing and I used a fine sanding paper to remove it to enable the removal of the lower bushing.

Unfortunately next I accidentally inserted the tool into the other lower leg and below the lower bushing. The tool was so tight that I couldn’t pull it out so I decided to hammer the both bushings out at once, which fortunately worked just fine. Probably should have made the tool just a little bit smaller. (currently around 34.5mm, 34mm is probably best)

I left the last bushing in place so that I can measure the depth when I get the insertion tool. The old bushings are also a lot lower than the new ones. This might be a good thing and provide more support…or not.