Stubborn control arm bolts

[Maim Menu]

I jacked up my car to change my wheels last week and noticed that the control arm bushings were GONE.

Now I'm changing both of them and one of the two bolts that attach to the frame is damn near impossible to take off. I used a torque wrench set to 200lbs, and got it moving some but it stuck again and now it wont move either way...I haven't even changed one arm yet... Amazing...

I'll need a long ass 1/2 extension to at least clear the torque wrench out of the fender for better leverage with a cheater pipe or something. I was supporting the control arm with the floor jack to avoid bending the bolts as they twist out but god DAMN that one was a stubborn biatch. Every other bolt came off with no problem, even heating off with the torch did not help at all. Penetrating oil is almost meaningless although I still drowned it anyway...

Can't wait to get this done, control arms make such a nice difference when you change them, especially when they've gone to hell. See you tomorrow sucker, we'll see how you do when I break you off with a 4 foot fence pipe.






I've read somewhere that you can break bolts free with a hammer and a punch? how does that work exactly I really don't get it

[ToyCam187]

Best of luck with the nasty bolts

[ghettosled]

dont use a torque wrench to break bolts loose! to my understanding, it damages the wrench. invest in the longest breaker bar you can buy.

[Maim Menu]

Yeah that's what I did

[Stonegrave]

for a hammer and a punch to work, you gotta use a cutoff wheel to make a slice into the side of the bolt head, and then jam the punch into the slot and hammer it out(works better with a chisel of some sort). to get that one out, i did what you are talking about. i used a 6" extension, a 1/2" ballsbuster breakerbar, and then some fence post i had left over. gotta get really really good leverage on it, too. good luck

[Maim Menu]

I was able to clear the fender with the extension, 17" breaker bar and fence post I got but couldn't get it off. I tried hammer, I tried candle wax after torch heat repeated several times, it has been soaked overnight in liters of penetrating oil, nothing. I couldn't go really hardcore on the bars cause it would lean on the brake disc and I really didn't like it.

I thought I'd just put the other bolts back and drive the car to a mechanic, but I can't put the bushing bolt back cause the bushing is not aligned anymore, and the other bolt that goes to the frame wont go back in either, it doesn't seem to find it's threads, tried driving it in with a drill but wasn't able to, I supported the control arm with the jack to align everything perfectly but wasn't able to put it back. Annoyingly enough, the bushing bolt is the same size but longer and goes in perfectly. The bolt threads are not stripped because I can twist the little bushing fastener on the frame bolt without any problem. This boggles the mind. The balljoints bolts are screwed back in though.

Lesson #1 learned today : do NOT remove ANY fastener before you succesfully loosen up ALL of them. No really, DON'T. If you crap out, you just screw 'em back in and get some help.

Car still sitting on the jackstands tonight, I think I'll have to get it moved to a garage but I don't like the idea of having it towed with a half fastened control arm.

Effing hell. Thanks for the help though. I might remove the brake disc tomorrow to try the breaker bar and fence post again. Still can't believe it...


EDIT : The picture made me laugh really hard, exactly how I felt

[Landseer]

Can you drill it out? Looks like a decent angle.

[davemac2]

How about applying heat using a torch to the engine cradle near the bolt? (not the bolt itself) Maybe somebody used some loctite on them or they are rusted big time? Try some PB blaster if you haven't already. Works better than WD-40 IMHO.

dave mc

[88 LE]

Just a thought.

Is there a nut on the backside or just a bolt going into the frame? If theres a nut on the backside, you want to loosen it, not the bolt.


P.S. If force doesn't work, your not using enough of it.

[Maim Menu]

There's no nut, it's a plain bolt. I don't think PB Blaster is available in Canada.

[ghettosled]

when you are applying heat, i assumed you arent heating the bolt itself. heat makes metal expand, so you need to heat what the bolt is going through and not the bolt itself. can you access the back side of the bolt?

[Maim Menu]

Yeah I'm heating the engne cradle around the bolt to expand the engine cradle threads, not the bolt itself. My leverage wasn't the best I could manage to get I think. The flexing point of the breaker bar was not stable enough and would move around towards the brake disc, I will try to build a support for it out of my old floor jack.

The other side of the bolt is not visible and I don't have a proper drill. Otherwise this POS would've been gone a long time ago. All I have is an electric impact wrench and 240LB of torque is not enough.

[Maim Menu]

Originally Posted by 88 LE

P.S. If force doesn't work, your not using enough of it.

Check it out

A friend came over tonight to help me out with this, we used the jack as a support to get better leverage. I was pulling on the breaker bar to hold it on the jack while he was pulling the fence post down. It got it moving about a quarter on first try so we gave it another go and the head snapped off. I could now at least remove the old control arm to see the exposed part of the bolt so I lubed it up some more and snapped a vise grip on it. And it apparently stripped because I could turn it well but it wasn't coming out. I can now litterally wiggle the bolt with my fingers but it doesn't have a head anymore, and it's stripped. Or the engine cradle threads are stripped.

[davemac2]

Man! what a b$tch that is! I hate when that kind of thing happens, and them you find yourself in deep sh$t. I wonder if a weld behind the bolt has broken off now because the bolt was totally seized in it? I'm assuming that maybe some sort of thread insert was welded to the cradle inside. That would explain how you can wiggle it. If you were able to shear the bolt head off of that, then it is definitely seized. That's a lot of torque for a bolt that size. Is there some sort of inspection hole underneath that you can at least use a small mirror with to inspect behind the bolt? Can you use a punch and a sledge hammer to try to punch the headless bolt back into the cradle frame? I don't know how else you can fix this except to replace the cradle, or have it repaired by having a hole drilled underneath for access to allow a new nut or thread insert welded back on and then the hole patched to return the structural integrity to the cradle frame?

It will be interwsting to see how this one gets solved. I wish you luck.

I just saw another suggestion for a similar problem to yours. If the interior nut weld is truly broken and you are able to punch the existing broken bolt out, another option is to find a long bolt of the same diameter and strength, and drill straight thru the cradle beam to the other side and slap a nut or two on there and torque it down. This is probably going to be your easiest solution besides breaking out a welder and doing major structural surgery. I think what I would personally do is to drill a hole underneath the cradle beam just big enough to insert a new nut into the back of the existing bolt hole with a lock washer. Drill the hole just big enough to slip the nut thru and no more. Epoxy the nut to a stiff piece of wire or something that you can use to guide it in maybe. THis will weaken the cradle beam a bit, but probably not a lot. If you are still concerned about it, you can always take the car in to someone later to get a small patch welded over it.

dave mc

[95WhiteCamry]

dayum, that's a long ass breaker bar

at any rate, i wish you all of luck in getting this fixed!