EF owner here lending a hand to a fellow Honda owner for the installation of a Neuspeed front upper tie bar, Tein Basic Coilovers, CD player, Factory painted Desert Myst Metallic Accord EX side skirts. It started out easy enough, however I never expected to have such a hard time with a car that is only 3 years old. It is a 2003 Accord LX 5spd w/ roughly 50k miles on it. For those of you in the northeast where the winters bring lots of salt, you know where this is going. Both front lower fork to lower control arm bolts were seized to the metal sleeve in the bushings. The damn fluted bolts always seem to hold in moisture and the rust that forms seems stronger than cement. So needless to say I started working on the car @ 9 AM and finished at 11pm w/ a few breaks for eating so I wouldn't pass out. The passenger side bushing gave way after repeatedly being subjected to heat to attempt to remove the bolt w/out having to replace the bushing. Unfortunately this didn't happen and the bushing and hardware were replaced w/ required the entire lower control arm be removed and the bushing pressed out. I have already installed on this car : McCulluch HID kit, EBC rotors/pads, Factory front chin lip, Factory low rear trunk spoiler, Comptech short shifter. I haven't had my *** kicked by a Honda suspension in a while so I guess I was due for it. Can't wait until I get out of the salt belt and into a climate where the only weathering that occurs is to the paint. Has anyone put the Tein coilovers in the latest version of the Accord, just wondering if they have had similar issues, I would have thought Honda would have done something different w/ the bolts by now, I have been fighting with seized fluted bolts for years now taking apart suspensions.

 

wow that sucksthat it took you all day but look on the bright side, at least you got it done...........


I have found that using an impact wrench on a lower torque setting to vibrate the bolts that are seized works well after you have used penetrating oil......

 

When I encountered the seized bolts up front I used PB Blaster on the bolts and let them soak while I did the rear suspension. Then I used a brand new Ingersoll Rand 1/2" Impact gun rated at 700 ft-lbs. I alternated heat and impact gun and still no luck. Then from all the force of the impact gun the internal metal sleeve and bolt ripped the bushing to pieces and thats when I had to get out the vice grips and die grinder.

 

Some pics of the parts installed, these pics weren't taken by me and unfortunately some are a bit blurry.

Stock



Rims temporarily mounted on the car with hids, short shifter, front lip chin spoiler and rear spoiler, ebc brake rotors and pads installed.






These were taken a couple of days ago after the long installation of the coilovers, sideskirts and neuspeed upper tie bar. He is going to mount new tires on the rims and put them back on the car when the weather gets nice again. Also he has front and rear camber kits in the mail and I will be installing those in a week or so.







Modified by Hondacivic90ed at 11:22 AM 3/13/2006

 

clean clean accord.. the pics seemed to scattred though.. like the very bottom pics show it lowered with out the rims.. and the pics with the rims seems like the accord isnt lowered at all.. (mabey its the angle and size of the rims..but i swear i see a big wheel gap)

anyways clean accord good job

 

thus the explanations above each image as to what it is and why

 

lol i guessed i scrolled to fast, didnt even see the text.. or did ya edit it and put it on there

 

Nice soccer mom car.

 

Nope didn't edit it they were there originally, and thanks for the comment, I'm sure the owner doesn't care one way or the other what people think of it, I was just posting the work that I did.