Thanks for the input. I spoke to nevillusa and he seemed to think a OEM bushing would help with this. Have returned the others and will order this week. I’ll let you know how it does go with these new ones. FWIW, the bush I had was a rein brand with a sharp not round profile.

iam also including a pic of how much the bushing wanted to skew off straight and center.

 

That upper pic is of a totally toasted busing anyway, you somehow managed to rip the boot. Make sure you don't do it with the next ones, water will get in and cause failure in quick order.

edit: And don't feel too bad about your frustrations. When I did my full rear end rebuild, I bought two brand new OEM knuckles. They don't come with bearings, but they do come with new upper/lower bushings that I did not want to deal with. I just had to get new dust shields and bearings which I pressed in myself. Then when I did the swap there was no downtime dealing with these things. That gave Simon a spare set which in turn he rebuilt then I think swapped quickly. But finding new knuckles at a good price too me about a year of looking around for the right sale to come up.

 

Updated.

finally got the OEM bushings. Tried again and they angled in again. Stopped and reset.

then I remembered a post either here or on YouTube about how to deal with new bushing - freeze the bushing and heat the knuckle. Well- I didn’t freeze the bushing, but the heat in the knuckle was just enough and did the trick.

lesson here - get the right tools and have your propane torch handy.