Not every transmission rebuilder replaces the bushings or bearings in the process of a rebuilding a transmission. In very few cases would I recommend not replacing the bushings or a bushing while going through the procedures of transmission rebuilding. Sometimes you may be working on a specialty transmission or an old transmission where a bushing kit or individual bushings are not available. That is where an educated decision has to be made. If the bushing is in good shape and you were going to change it as part of the overall job, that bushing can be reused. In other cases you may have to find a substitute by going through ‘the box of new bushings‘ that were nor used or were extra that every transmission shop has lying around, or even going through some of the other bushings in your inventory that may work properly. And sometimes you just have to go to a small machine shop and have a bushing made.
Bushing Kit:
T-35 bushings
The above picture is of a bushing kit for a Borg Warner T-35 transmission. After removing the old bushings properly, by pressing them out, we can press the new bushings into the respective bores they fit in. Not that it is a tough job, but it is easy to ruin a bunch of bushings while you practice installing them in the beginning. So practice bushing removal and installation on a common and cheap bushing. Some bushings even take a drop of ” LocTtite” to hold it in place.
That being said, you want to buy a rebuilt transmission from a business that replaces all of the bushings during an overhaul. cheating on bushings is a sure recipe for a disaster down the road. While your rebuilt transmission might last the warranty period, how would fell if it failed right out of warranty, because the rebuilder decided that a few old bushings were ‘good enough’ to reuse? Especially when a bushing kit costs less than 5o bucks in most cases and takes about 30 to 60 minutes to remove and install.
How can you tell? Trust, doing research on the company you are going to do business with. Word of mouth is the best. After being in the transmission business for over 30 years and being very involved in rebuilding our transmissions in a manner our customers expect us to, we finally found a company we could trust to supply us with transmissions that met our expectations in every way when we were too busy. GotTransmissions.com always provided us with a great product we could trust, very reasonable prices and excellent service. Trust me, you won’t need to do any more footwork, I already did it.
