VTECVillain

Arrrrrrrrgh!!!!!!!!!!!! My fiancee was driving her 91 CRX with 96 B18B1 and the lower control arm broke loose from the lower balljoint and jacked the car pretty bad. It made the wheel kick sideways and ripped the cv joint in half but luckily on the tranny side. The car dropped onto the wheel while it was sideways and buckled the fender. It makes me sick because I was thinking just the other day how well it has held up since I did the swap.
We got it towed and I just got done checking it out. It looks to me like the bolt through the lower balljoint that bolts to the lower control arm is stripped about 5-6 threads up. The nut is missing and so is the cotter pin. She had that balljoint replaced about 2 years ago because it was bad at the time of inspection. The garage replaced it first then passed the car with a new sticker. I'll bet that they put the nut on with an impact wrench and/or cross threaded it. The balljoint still looks to be in good shape though.
If that bolt is stripped, will buying a new lower balljoint include that bolt? I don't know much about it, but I do know the upper balljoint and control arm are set as one piece and to replace the upper you need to get the full uppper control arm with balljoint. Is the bottom balljoint the same way?

owen_the_soyboy

a new balljoint will indeed have that bolt sticking out of it to pass thru the lca.
it is possible they never replaced the cotter pin, or that they were not able to tighten the castle nut as tight as it should have been if the balljoint threads were jacked already.

replacing that balljoing is a pain on GSR knuckles, thats for sure, because you need to remove the whole assembly to pop out a ring around where the axle pokes thru to get to the balljoint. ARGH! Probably the same on your car? not sure though.. maybe it will be easy.

at least nobody got hurt! but sorry to hear about your hassle