I've been working on my rear suspension this weekend and it has sucked. I thought it would be an easy fix knowing that the two springs were changed easily. But, both of my rear LCA strut bolts broke. So now my next plan is to rent a reciprocating saw so I could cut off the nut end of the rear struts. I will then try to hammer out the broken screw thats stuck inside the bushing....

So my question is, has anyone out there ever done this and what kind of problems did you have/not have????

 

the dreaded frozen bolt on the rear LCA. i think we all have gone through this problem when installing springs on our cars. when i was doing mine, the head snapped of on both sides as well. I broke two ratchet's and an extention trying to remove that bolt. i had to take my car to my friends shop to get it fixed. The only way we could fix it was to remove the whole LCA's in order to press out the bushing and install a new one. that bolt is rusted shut inside the lower control arm. it will be almost impossible to remove it unless u have a hydraulic press, but that still might not work....it might though. but there's NO way that ur gonna get it out with a hammer.
this is how we solved the problem:
we had to use a saw zaw and cut off the bolt on the other side of the strut on both LCA's. after we did that we had to remove the lower control arm. removing it was tough, because the other bolt thats right below the rear disc break on the LCA was also frozen. we had to cut that bolt off too and then heat it up in order to get the stuck piece of bolt off. after we heated it up, we used a vice grip to grab the bolt and unscrew it. this happend on both sides! very time consuming. with all the bolts off, we removed the LCA. we heated up the bushing's with a torch until the rubber melted. then using a chisel, we were able to chisel out the casing from the bushing. then all that was left was to press in a new bushing. we did it by spraying the outer casing of the bushing with WD-40 and then using a vice to press it in.
all in all it took us 2 days to do... but half the day was spent waiting for parts

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by boosted k20 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">the dreaded frozen bolt on the rear LCA. i think we all have gone through this problem when installing springs on our cars. when i was doing mine, the head snapped of on both sides as well. I broke two ratchet's and an extention trying to remove that bolt. i had to take my car to my friends shop to get it fixed. The only way we could fix it was to remove the whole LCA's in order to press out the bushing and install a new one. that bolt is rusted shut inside the lower control arm. it will be almost impossible to remove it unless u have a hydraulic press, but that still might not work....it might though. but there's NO way that ur gonna get it out with a hammer.
this is how we solved the problem:
we had to use a saw zaw and cut off the bolt on the other side of the strut on both LCA's. after we did that we had to remove the lower control arm. removing it was tough, because the other bolt thats right below the rear disc break on the LCA was also frozen. we had to cut that bolt off too and then heat it up in order to get the stuck piece of bolt off. after we heated it up, we used a vice grip to grab the bolt and unscrew it. this happend on both sides! very time consuming. with all the bolts off, we removed the LCA. we heated up the bushing's with a torch until the rubber melted. then using a chisel, we were able to chisel out the casing from the bushing. then all that was left was to press in a new bushing. we did it by spraying the outer casing of the bushing with WD-40 and then using a vice to press it in.
all in all it took us 2 days to do... but half the day was spent waiting for parts</TD></TR></TABLE>

DAMN that sucks....
I had an 89 civic and a 93 integra and this never happened. Well on the teg one LCA bolt broke but I my bro was able to hammer the bi*** out. This simple spring change has been a crazy project. I worked on it all day yesterday and all day today and still need to press out the bushings and put in new ones. I also have to find a way to take off the end of that bolt that holds the brake assembly cause on one side that thing broke too!!! What a pain in the *** man!!!

All I need to do now though is change those bushings(two on one of the LCA's), press in new ones and get the rest of that bolt off, then put evrything back in place....I can't wait.

Total money spent= $20 for sawzaw rental, $25 on blades, $54 on three Honda bushings, $3 on grade 8 strut(non-Honda) bolts, nuts and washers(spent too much money, gotta save), $3 on antiseize, $10 on extra Honda bolt for the lca that I still need to take out, still need to pay machine shop for the bushing removal/placing, and i don't know how much a little portable torch will be to heat the rest of that bolt I have to remove...