Poly leaf spring bushings

Due to the "new" oval track springs being junk, I am temporarily (for this summer?) swapping my old 6 leaf OEM springs back into my Duster. This forced me to replace the front eye bushings as the old ones were for a 1/2" bolt and the front spring hangers I have use a 5/8" bolt. Seemed like the easy way to do this was to drill out the rubber so I could pull out the old center and push in new poly bushings (avoids having to pay someone to press new ones in, saves time and might stiffen up the suspension some).

Question is, should the outer shell be removed as well? The instructions in the Energy Suspension kit say they must be removed, but a quick search turned up threads where (non-mopar) people did just that and then had to find a way to make up for a bunch of slop. Just a quick measurement leads me to believe I will be in the same boat if I remove the outer shell.

When I get home and have time, I will try plugging a bushing in and see how it fits but thought I would see if anyone else has any experience with this.

BTW, kit I bought was 5.2106G, for 2" spring eye with a 5/8" bolt. Everything looks to fit fine, but hate to have to lose more time trying to fix an issue I could have avoided by leaving the outer bushing in the spring.