93allmotorcoupe

Well after having several headaches already with a rear disk conversion on my EJ1 ive now run into the worst by far this afternoon...while removing the drivers side trailing arm, the bolt holding the forward-most pivot arm was seized to the bushing and would not come out. After cutting out the bolt and removing the trailing arm, the nut on the inside of the body fell and is now stuck inside the body, with no way for us to reposition it in the proper place.

This is very hard to explain so here are pictures with my professional paint editing skills

This is the general area of the problem, for those who havent seen it before:


Here are pictures of the bolt itself as well as the bolt/bushing seized inside the arm I mentioned:



Heres a closer view of the area of the body. The larger hole is where the plate/nut is supposed to be, and it slides back and forth to allow for alignment. The smaller hole on the bottom is the only other hole in the structure:


And here are my paint skills. This is where the plate/nut is currently sitting in the structure, circled in red:


And here is a picture showing where the plate needs to go:


You can see in the above picture that there is a second piece of sheet metal inside the structure meant to hold the nut in place. Im assuming it fell down through the bottom. The only idea weve come up with so far is to cut a hole in the bottom of the structure big enough to fit a couple fingers inside and try and work the piece back where its supposed to be, then having it welded back up after its all together. Before we go drilling, lets see if the H-T experts can give us any advice.

sicones

I have heard of this before, it looks like you are going to have to cut a hole in the bottom to get to that bolt. this is whats scaring me from doing a disk swap
lets hear from some other people before you go cutting

93allmotorcoupe

Thanks for the reply, Im sure this has happened to somebody else...any more input out there?

john breezy

good luck

93allmotorcoupe

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by john breezy &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">good luck</TD></TR></TABLE>

Thanks for the advice

Skunk.Werks

iTrader: (2)

You have to slot that rear subframe, then you can get a wrench in there to hold a new nut up to the LCA bolt.

thelucysong

I have the exact same problem.

thelucysong

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Skunk.Werks &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">You have to slot that rear subframe, then you can get a wrench in there to hold a new nut up to the LCA bolt.</TD></TR></TABLE>

This is probably what I'm going to end up doing.

93allmotorcoupe

Thats not a bad idea, but if I do that how would the old one come out? Wouldnt it rattle like hell?

spoonracer84eg

Mine are siezed up also and I knew I was going to snap the head off of the bolt so I didnt mess with it. Unfortuanately with that bolt siezed my alignment cant properly get done which sucks. Good luck.

MasterKwan

You're going to have a hell of a time getting a rear alignment. That's the toe adjustment. Might want to order a set of adjustable links to replace the factory ones so, that bolt never has to come loose again.

I believe SPC has a couple different styles.

93allmotorcoupe

Im aware that its the toe adjustment, however hopefully ill be able to somehow get the original nut back in place and the new bolt that goes in will never have to be fully taken out again, only loosened. Could you give me a link or show me some of the links you mentinoed?

robbieshonda

cut a hole weld a plate over it when your done. or drill a hole big enough to get the nut out and wrap a peice of soldering wire around it to position it

Luserkid

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by robbieshonda &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">cut a hole weld a plate over it when your done. </TD></TR></TABLE>



If that were to happen to me i would do the exact same, but put a washer on it as well (the nut/bolt area)

93allmotorcoupe

Thats the plan so far...either cutting a hole or notching it to fit a wrench up in there with a new nut....i think im going to end up cutting out a hole though, get the old nut out and slide it back up in there and get the bolt in it...unless someone else has any other genius ideas...

Heinz57

cutting a hole, and sticking a wrench there to re-tighten the bolt back is your only option. Take a cutting torch, make a nice little hole, and your set. Dont worry about covering the hole you make. Just spray some undercoating all over that hole you made to prevent rust.

I had to do this in the front when i installed a front sway bar.

jaydm7182

not trying to be a dic but come on common sense
cut hole out of the bottom put a new nut on in the inside

i ve done it like 4 times on customers cars

MotorMouth

Use a hole saw to make the hole, not a cutting torch. Please weld a plate on after.

Did you use an impact gun or a breaker bar???

Targa250R

This is the exact reason why I tell people to just unbolt the hub assemblies from the trailing arms. You shouldn't even have to touch the compensator arms for a rear disc swap. Nobody ever listens to my good advice . . .

93allmotorcoupe

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by MotorMouth &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Use a hole saw to make the hole, not a cutting torch. Please weld a plate on after.

Did you use an impact gun or a breaker bar??? </TD></TR></TABLE>

I will not be using a cutting torch, and I did not use an impact gun. I used a regular ratchet to break the bolt loose. And a plate will definitely be welded on (not by me, by a professional welder/good friend of mine) to prevent any possible rusting/corrosion.

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by jaydm7182 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">not trying to be a dic but come on common sense
cut hole out of the bottom put a new nut on in the inside

i ve done it like 4 times on customers cars</TD></TR></TABLE>

Common sense told me that when writing the original post. I asked if there were any other ideas from people who have been in this situation. After all, Im only a kid wrenching on his car in my garage, and I didnt want to go cutting any holes and making the situation even worse before I knew exactly what I was doing.

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Targa250R &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">This is the exact reason why I tell people to just unbolt the hub assemblies from the trailing arms. You shouldn't even have to touch the compensator arms for a rear disc swap. Nobody ever listens to my good advice . . .</TD></TR></TABLE>

I neve planned on removing the compensator arms, just slightly loosening the bolt to swing the trailing arm down. And because I ended up with a bent trailing arm anyway, I will be switching the hub assembly over to my original arms. But either way, dont you have to remove the trailing arm to get the hub/spindle assembly off anyway?

93allmotorcoupe

Guys in the suspension forum asked me to do a small writeup on the repair, so I thought Id share with you guys. Here it is:

Well as promised here is my short How-To on how to fix this problem. There are probably a number of ways you can go about this, however after a few days of thinking about it we decided that this would be best for our situation. Our idea was to drill a circular hole through the bottom of the subframe. Other good suggestions which you might want to consider were to:

1. Use a powerful magnet to get the nut back in its original location.
-We thought this wouldve been way too tedios and time consuming

2. Cut a small notch towards the front just large enough to hold up a wrench with a new nut.
-This was a good idea, however the old nut would still be inside the subframe.

3. Cut an I shape in the bottom and bend the tabs down to open it up.
-Also a good idea, however this required more advanced cutting. The position of the car made this hard to do, and we also werent crazy about bending and rebending the soft sheetmetal of the subframe.

Now that we're through that, Ill show you what we did. We used a 2" hole saw bit to drill a hole up through the bottom of the subframe. This would allow us to make one very simple cut, allow us enough room to fix the problem, and also provide a very simple way to weld the are back shut. If youre doing this on your own, remember to wear safety goggles and some type of MechanxWear style gloves (which is why my hands are so clean in the pics ).

Sorry, no photos during the drilling but here are a few shots of the hole after the cut was made:




The hole you just made will have small,sharp shards of metal everywhere. You may want to smooth it out with a grinder before sticking your fingers through it. This is also why I mentioned to wear gloves. After cutting, the nut will fall out the bottom through the hole you just made, find it immediately! Here's what mine looked like:





You can see there is a flange with a threaded nut on the other side. When re-installing, the flange faces towards the back of the car and the nut faces towards the front. Or, in other words (and if youre working on a different area of the car with the same problem) the bolt goes through the flange first, and then gets threaded into the nut.

Now that youve seen the nut, Ill show you where it goes inside the subframe. Here are a few shots through the hole we made. They are very blurry, but you still get the idea.





You can see above the small slot that is supposed to hold this nut in place. Mine did not appear to be bent or in any way out of shape. The slot is big enough for the nut to go back through it easily, which obviously means that its big enough for it to fall out very easily. In my opinion, its a pretty bad design flaw, but back on topic...

Grab the nut with a couple of fingers, and again with the flange side going in first, reach it up through the hole and back into the slot where it belongs. It may take some time and finesse, but you'll get it in there. Once its in, be sure to slide it back and forth as if you were doing it with the arms on adjusting the Toe. Make sure there are no high spots or low spots, and if there are you may want to bend those back to normal. Mine seemed to be straight, so we didnt need to make any changes with it.

Here are photos of the nut back in the slot:





Once we are finished bolting everything back together and the car is driveable, we are taking it to a friend of mine's shop to get welded back shut. We dont have any welding experience or we would do it ourselves But please, DO NOT cut a hole like this if you are not planing on welding it once youre done. Water will get in there and your subframe will start to rust and corrode from the inside out. It is also a structural region of the car that needs to be supported properly. With a gaping hole in it, its not going to be as strong as it should be. Also be sure to cover the area with a good undercoating. With that said, I hope this is of help to some people, and if there are any questions or comments feel free to reply in here or shoot me a PM

Also, if anyone can get in touch with a Moderator to have the title changed that would be great...maybe something like Disk Swap Problem: Nut stuck inside subframe or something to that effect for anyone searching for this

sicones

nice write up , but my questions is, how can this be avoided in the first place??? every time you take out that bolt on any honda that damn nut is just going to fall out????

Paxil4x4

I wonder if the hole could be cut from the top?

93allmotorcoupe

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by sicones &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">nice write up , but my questions is, how can this be avoided in the first place??? every time you take out that bolt on any honda that damn nut is just going to fall out????</TD></TR></TABLE>

No, they dont always fall out...i guess you just have to get lucky. Mine on the other side is still in and has been fine without any bolt in it for over a week now.<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by packthis &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I wonder if the hole could be cut from the top?</TD></TR></TABLE>

I think this was mentioned in here somewhere, but cutting from the top would mean cutting down at least 6" through the interior sheetmetal of the car. Theoretically it could be done but it wouldnt be very feasable or practical.

CRXified

excellent write up, i need to do this on BOTH sides of my car, damn canadian weather...