Gun oil didn't get the job done.
The front end of my car has been rattling for a couple of thousand miles now, and I finally got sick of the racket. This weekend I put in a new lower control arm, which will, with any luck, cure the problem. The old arm came right off, but the stupid bushing at the end of the arm (the bushing that I can't tell why its there in the first place) has to be removed and slipped onto the new arm.
Predictably, it didn't want to come off. Two hours of hammering later, out finally succumbed. The old ball joints is on the right. Even if you know nothing about cars, it's pretty obvious that it's not supposed to look like that.
The old bushing didn't want to slip onto the new arm, resisting lubrication with spit, gear lube, and gun oil (REAL gun oil with Teflon, not that tarted up lube). Damned near desperate, I remembered the tube of personal lubricant stashed away in the back of the garage. Sorry, but there's no interesting story behind its presence in the garage. It just showed just up in a box somewhere. Anyway, I slathered some of that stuff onto the shaft of there control arm, and the bushing just slid on with no drama. My faith in the miraculous ability of KY jelly to insert something into a cavity that is far too small to accommodate it has been restored.
The gnarly end of the control arm, where I hammered for two hours, can be seen on the left. There is NO REASON it should have been this hard.
So its all back together now, I have taken a shower, and my reward for a job completed is a big, cold glass of apple juice. It tastes amazing, probably because i'm dehydrated like a raisin.
And now, off to bed..