Hey I was on the way to work this morning and coming down my hard cap road out in the country doing about 25 maybe 30 and I hear POP and grinding. I got out and looked. My rear lower control arm on the passenger side snapped in half. it was leaning on the inside of the rim so i was able to limp back to the house and when i put it in park it fell out from the rim. Close Call!

But what the hell would cause my arm to snap like that? it snapped right parallel to the edge of the rim. ill post pictures when i get it up on jack stands...

 

Wow, that is crazy. Was it extremely rusted or corroded or something? I have a set of stock ones if you need them.

 

I swapped everything to Poly bushings over a year ago and everything looked fine. I just put it up on stands and take a look, I see nothing wrong except the obvious. No damage, just a scratch on the inside of the rim lip where it caught. I have noticed that the last few months its been loose in the rear end in corners. The rear shocks need replaced though so mabey that will tighten things up if I replaced them I don't know.

 

Looking at the pictures that thing has been cracked a while.... the rust tells what was going on. The second to last picture shows only about 1/3 of clean metal left, where the rust set in has been cracked for a little while. I had this happen on a 1 1/4" output shaft of a test fixture, the shaft was only held together by the outermost edge of the one side and it just gave, no rhyme or reason no jarring issues.


sucks but at least it didnt take anything else with it

 

I just got it all apart. Yep your right, i was just thinking that.

 

Bet that was an interesting moment when it snapped....

 

You must've been taking some serious turns. With the strut already blown too plus that trailing arm could be bent. Hopefully you can bend it back. You need a rear swaybar on there.

 

Yea i was looking into getting a sway bar before. Isn't there on on a DX or something that is comparable? Trying to think of cheapest route.

 

Wow! Lucky you! That could have been disastrous. Do you remember hitting anything like a massive pothole or large rock in the road in the past year or so?

 

Yea I wouldn't be surprised.

 

No, the DX doesn't have factory sway bars. You'll need to get EX/SI control arms, or aftermarket. If you do put a sway bar on there, do yourself a favor and put a tie bar or subframe brace on there too, otherwise you risk ripping out your subframe. Do that, and the car just became a pile of scrap metal.

 

all the 96-00 civic control arms are the same.

 

Hmm, the part numbers are the same. I thought the DX/LX arms didn't have a hole for a sway bar...guess I was wrong

 

Ok, so a sway bar a tie bar and what else?

 

Subframe brace > tie bar. You'll obviously need new control arms, but that's it. ASR sells a nice combo package that will have EVERYTHING you need.

 

Well I was lookin more toward using a stock 13mm bar from an Si. The ASR kit is cool though to.

 

Put new arm on there the other day in about 10 minutes. No problems! Will take it back off later on this week and swap the bushings. tada! Slathered bolts in antiseize this time.