My 2000 Civic Si was a daily and went through a couple New Jersey winters before it was retired and now I only drive it in nice weather.
Today we tried to take off the old gear and do new coilovers, subframe brace, sway bar, lower control arms.

The bolts are pretty much seized on there so bad we can't even get it to budge with an air gun. And this was AFTER hitting them with Liquid Wrench every day for a week.

Oh and yay for being in a hick town with no import-friendly shops to help us out!

End of rant. And now, your moment of zen...

 

wowzers! sucks, just think if it were even older...

 

not sure where the tech is but Texas FTW!

 

The tech is where you offer up suggestions on how to solve this, Cheech.

 

Thats nothing, come to atlantic canada, we'll show you rust. You'll have to use a long breaker/power bar and try to loosen the bolts, I can almost assure you they will break inside the bushings. You will need to then cut the welded nut off the other end, and either replace the LCAs, bushings are try to extract the broken bolts from the old bushings.

 

Seen much worse here in the Northeast. It is discouraging, but certainly fixable.

 

1st day I got my em1 I took the reAr lca bolts out and put anti. Seize on all of them

 

after trying to take off bolts around that area in an eg, help only came from a propane torch. i had to heat them um til it was glowing red

 

Yeah luckily we're replacing almost everything under there, so if I can just find a way to get all of this off, it's just a matter of putting the new on. This time with anti-seize.

Not that it comes out even in the rain anymore, but you get the point.

 

when u put penitraiting oil ont hem u should heat them up with alil torch or something the heat helps it soak in more.

 

I havent found any part on my car rusted yet besides the bolts for the strut bar in the engine bay. Not the ones holding it down but the ones on the actual bar to make it snug. Florida treats cars pretty good unless you live right on the coast.

 

thought i'd chim in with some east coast rust.

 

i live in wa and i have seen worse then that lol.
if your replace everything then just go at them, they most likely will break, and its going to be a lot harder to remover but its doable.
either get a breaker bar, plus a pipe and get the car up as high as you can or get a impact,

 

here in northern Ontario, cars see alot of salt in the winter and get pretty rusty fast. try hitting it with some Fluid Film that stuff works wonders, works alot better then anything else i've tried including liquid wrench,

here's what it looks like:

 

burn bolts get new ones...

 

this is one of the reasons i like being in CA! good luck with that rust bro!

 

wouldn't that just cause a fire and burn off all of the penetrant?

 

not to thread jack but can someone explain this whole torch business

I've heard of this before but what exactly do you do? burn off the bolt? or just heat it and use a socket?

 

seriously dont even waste your time trying to break the bolts lose. its not going to happen. this is what you need to do.


step 1. get a grinder and a cut off wheel and go to town.
step 2. put on new suspension and bolts with lots of anti seize

i just went through this mess a few months ago.

 

^^^^ this... I finally went to replace the factory struts on my 97 hx and the driver side went great but when I did the rear pass. side the outer lca bolp was seized inside the bushing.... I was doing the rear brakes too so I pulled off the whole drum assembly to take the backing plate off so could get to that nut to cut it off using a cutoff wheel on a 4-1/2" hand grinder, it was so stuck in there you couldn't even pound it out with a punch and had to use prybars on both sides to let the arm swing down.

and guess what? new bushings are not avail. from honda. I went to the dealer trying to get those bushings and new bolts but the bushings sent me the ones for the lower shock bolt which is a totally different size. I had looked up the price for the arm which comes with all 3 bushings from majestic's website by the time I called the dealer back and they let me have it at wholesale and took the bushings I ordered back so in the end I got the arm next day and didn't have to pay shipping whereas majestic would've charged me for that and I still saved a lil over $10 from going to my dealer.

and yours has a ton more rust underneath than mine does so gl with it, make sure you have air tools, a lot of time, and you might even be able to come up with some new choice words to say in the process also make sure you get all new bolts and use anti-sieze on everything especially on the shanks and threads on them.

 

you can just burn through the bolts but you do need to have the right kind of torch. I work in a shop and when i need to do this i use an oxy-setaline torch and it only takes a couple minutes. i don't think straight up propane will burn through it. you can also use the other method and just get the bolt hot and then use a socket on it. both ways are effective

If you are planning on saving any of your suspension components i would use a ziz wheel and just cut the bolts off as well. that way you won't risk burning anything your not planning on changing. air hammer with a chizle head works too

 

you didnt ask how to solve this and you said end of rant in your first post. Youve been on here since 02 so i thought it was only a rant. But if u have access to an impact ive seen guys alternate between trying to loosen it then tighten it to get it out. Like a short burst back and forth to kinda shock it free

 

NJ winters are ftl

 

i had to cut mine off with a jigsaw from some PA winters

 

They are referring to burning off the bushing.