OK on my 92 civic i was installing my KYB AGX's and when i got to the back the heads broke off. I even sprayed them down with PB blaster. How would you guys go about taking these bolts off? Its the lower one that goes into the lower control arm. thanks. ill take some pics in a bit.

 

is it safe to drive around like that, i ordered new bolts but its going to take at least till friday till they are here. thanks

 

This is very very common in Honda's with that rear suspension design. Basically the bolt rusts itself into the bushing forming a solid piece. No amount of twisting on the head will get it loose. There are several approaches to fixing it.

1) remove the lower control arm and the shock as one piece
2) cut the shock loose by hacking through the bolt on both sides of the bushing
3) burn out the bushing with a torch and install a new bushing
or
3) replace the lower control arm with a new one with a new bushing already installed

Either way its no fun

 

I was thinking it would come down to that so i started alread soaking the bolts for the lower control arm in PB blaster. Doesnt sound fun.

 

Do you think its safe to drive the car like with the broken bolts?

 

no

 

this happened to me the other day when i was installing my Omni LCAs. I wound up just cutting the old LCA out with a sawsall, and buying a complete set of bolts from honda, as well as some anti-seize so it doen't happen again.

 

yeah, this sucks really bad, i dont have a car right now till honda gets my bolts in. I think i might try driving it. its gonna be like 4 or 5 days till i get those bolts

 

what's going to hold your suspension together?

it's your car...

 

I broke a the nut off a frozen rear suspension in a Honda once. I did everything I could thik of to get it out. Pounded it, covered it in degreaser, covered it in liquid wrench, jacked the car up, pounded some more, flexed the suspension, pounded some more, heated it, pounded some more. Finally I gave up. Drove it very very gingerly to a shop that ended up having to sawzall it out.

Bottom line is if you can't get it out then its probably ok to drive it to someone who can. But I would not daily drive the car.

 

Sorry, didnt mean i was going to drive it daily, just to my girl friends house to work on it there, its bout a 15 min drive doing bout 35 max! The nut welded to the shock is what is holding it in there, only thing i think would happen is possibly bend the shock at the bottom, but i am replacing them so....

 

This same thing happened to me this morning. I got it all cut apart, but now I need to order and install the new bushings.

Has anyone here ever tried to replace the rear lower strut bushing in the control arm without removing it? I saw another thread that suggested renting a "ball joint press" from Auto Zone.

Has anyone actually tried to do that?

 

When I snapped the head off the lca-to-shock bolt on my passenger side, I was lucky enough to be replacing my LCA's at the same time so I removed the lca and shock as one piece.
However, on my driver's side I snapped the head off my trailing arm-to-lca bolt, and I wasn't replacing the trailing arm. Its the same situation, other than its the trailing arm and not the shock, and its a flange nut not a regular nut welded to the back. In the end, it took an air-acetylene torch and pair of vice grips to turn out the remaining bolt fragment through the rear(we had used a reciprocating saw to cut through the bolt on either side of the lca).
If I were you, I'd try and do the same, and if you don't have the $$$ for an air/acetylene torch (like me ), at least give the propane torch and vice grips a shot first before you have a shop charge you $100 to do it. A decent vice grip can be had for like $30 I think, and the torch and propane tank is like $40 together (I got mine from Craftsman).