I was installing some new shocks on my car and when trying to remove the rear trailing arm bolt to drop the control arm... SNAP! My impact gun snapped the head and a little bit of the bolt itself right off How can I get the the rest of the bolt out? I put my car back on the ground and the trailing arm sags down on the control arm a little bit on the one side by maybe a quarter inch due to that piece of bolt missing. This is my only ride and I cant work on it until this thursday. Would it be safe to drive on in the meantime??? Any advice would be GREATLY appreciated! BTW the car is 98 Civic coupe and it is the rear driver side. Thanks

 

The car is most definitely unsafe to drive. You're going to have to get a new control arm, because finishing the job will result in an unusable bushing in that trailing arm location.

When this happened on one of my cars, I used a reciprocating saw to cut the bolt on either side of the bushing, between the trailing arm mount. There is maybe a 3mm gap or something in those spaces, so it's tight, plus the blade tip will most likely slip around and contact the TA mount/bracket, bending the blade and/or tip, so I went through 2 blades that way (straightening them out periodically when I could). Then you take some vice grips and get a REALLY GOOD grip on the remaining portion of the bolt end and unscrew it from the flange nut on the back side of the trailing arm mount. The other portion on the other side of the trailing arm mount should fall right out, it's not threaded.

What happens is that the bolt becomes rusted and seized up inside the bushing's inner metal sleeve. So you end up with an LCA that has a portion of bolt fused inside the bushing on the trailing arm side, and is unusable. You can choose to press out the stock bushing and press in a new one, or simply get a brand new LCA from your local Honda parts store.

When reinstalling, be sure to anti-seize the unthreaded portion of the bolt to prevent this from happening in the future. Also, if you encounter the same problem in other bolts, use some penetrating oil (like PB Blaster or that orange stuff) and a hand torch, rotating between the two, to try and break the bolt free inside the bushing before hitting it with an impact gun.

 

Would it be possible to carefully drill out the bolt far enough for the control arm to drop and then use the vise grips to remove the threaded portion to keep from damaging the bushing? I really dont want to have to replace an entire control arm because of a lousy bolt. And BTW what is a hand torch???

 

You could try Drill-Out, I considered it but didn't go that route because I had replacement LCA's lying around. OEM are not that expensive. I'm not sure Drill-Out could break the bolt free anyhow, although I'm sure the saw method works.

A propane hand torch:

 

Yeah I thought about ordering a new LCA, but this being my only car, I cant really afford to have the car down while I wait to have one delivered, this is something that has to be taken care of ASAP. Thank God I got a spare bolt to replace it. Im gonna give the drilling a try. I have a feeling it might be pretty time consuming, but worth the shot. Thanks a million for the input! I never heard of using the torch to break a bolt free.... If drilling doesnt work, I will use the other method and just get a new LCA, considerig a have a 5 day weekend coming up

 

yeah the torch + penetrating oil method helped me get the majority of my bolts loose, I only ever snapped two. one I did use the torch + oil method, the other I didn't. you just soak it in PB Blaster or Liquid Wrench for ~2 minutes, then hold the flame to the bolt for a minute, then soak it again, then torch, and I repeat about 3 times. Then I let the bolt cool off until its warm to the touch, and hit it with the impact. if that doesn't work, it's in there good.

 

So I tried drilling it and it was just taking too long so I went with your method and cut the thing off. I actually found a dealership that had a control arm in stock. I got the thing out and everything is back to normal. I used the PB and torch on some other bolts that didnt want to budge and couldn't believe how well it worked!!! Thank you so much for your help! I really learned alot

 

good stuff, glad I could help. make sure you anti-seize the new bolt!

 

LOL! I went through and anti seized all of my bolts