One of the old bikes I still have is a Yeti Lawwill DH-6 that I bought new back in 1998. It's retired now and eventually I'll sell it, but over the years when I thought it would be my "forever bike" I collected spare parts for it when they came up for sale. One part was a used upper swingarm in good condition (not cracked or bent, which is rare...). Not sure when I bought it or how much I paid for it, but I don't need it now and when someone posted on the Schwinn/Yeti Lawwill Facebook group looking for a swingarm, I offered it for sale. He also needs the inner bushing carrier parts of the pivots. One of my other purchases was a beat to hell frame a friend was selling. While pretty much the entire frame is beat beyond usefulness, those bushing carriers are just about useable. I just had to remember how to remove them... since the last time I've done this was some 20+ years ago.
First I tried the "screw in a bolt and hammer" method. No dice. It didn't budge and since it's just a M6x1.0 thread in aluminum, I knew it couldn't take a lot of pounding.
I needed to make a tool.
For better or worse, this is an operation I've done a number of times on cars. In fact, I have a special (and not cheap) tool made by BMW for doing this task on MINI Cooper lower control arm bushings (because I used to do that task a lot for friends when I was active in the NJ area MINI club). I needed a sleeve that I could pull the bushing carrier into. But a sleeve that wasn't too thick, due to the design of the upper swingarm (on the lower swing arm, a large socket would have worked).
So with a dial caliper in hand, I headed off to Home Desperate in search of something I could fashion into a sleeve. Something turned out to be a 1"x3/4" copper reducer. The 1" end of the reducer was the perfect inside diameter and wall thickness. So I grabbed that along with some M6x1.0 bolts in 65mm and 75mm lengths with matching nuts and washers.
I would also need a fairly stout backer plate with a 1/4" hole, so I made that from a piece of 1.5" steel stock I already have. After an hour or so of sawing, filing and drilling, I had my tool:
So... does it work? Assemble the sleeve and plate on the swingarm, thread the bolt into the threaded carrier side, tighten with a 10mm wrench, and after a minute or so of turning, the carrier was out of the swingarm:
(repeat for the upper swingarm).
The other side is a little different - since it's not threaded (a short M6x1.0 bolt pulls the two parts together into the frame). In this case, I used a nut and washer on the inside of the frame and two 10mm wrenches to tighten up the tool and pull the carrier out.
And out it came...
Now to get them cleaned up a bit, packed up with the swingarm and shipped off.
Edit: Mert Lawwill is actually a member of the Facebook group and posted a response in my little thread. That made my day.