This whole exercise was to get to this point…..

The engine is on the bench – pissing oil I might add, mainly because the drain plug is somewhat forked,

So I bought a Flank-Drive socket 24mm, which spectacularly failed to loosen the offending bolt either. In the end I took the angle-grinder and cut 2 parallel sections off of the bolt, right up to the copper washer and created 2 flat surfaces for a 19mm spanner, which worked, luckily… And Auto Alpina had a sump plug in stock, with an allen drive…..
And the swimgarm bushes arrived from BMW Germany in 10 days as well – good going!!
Anyway, back to the swingarm bushes….
As seen here, the bush is seized onto the bolt holding the “blind” right side of the swingarm – and as I am replacing them, best is to take the mini-grinder with an abrasive blade and cut a slot into the bush, being careful to do as little (like none) damage to the bolt it sits on. My thought is that I am going to grease the inner bolt anyway, if there are any “nicks” on it, they will be filled with grease anyway, and the tight fit means it wont damage the new bush. Hopefully.

Anyway, to work it was, and the removed/cut bushes, left & right.

Lets hope we don’t regret that…..