hey im doing a rear end swap and need to get the control arms out bc i got new ones..how in the hell do i get the bolts out of the bushing!! ive tried everything does anyone have ideas??

 

take a hammer, and beat them out

 

defenitly tried that n doesnt work..its also hard to get a hammer down there.

 

use a jack to take some of the pressure off the lca, should make it easier

 

Can you turn the bolt with a rachet or wrench?

Try taking weight off of it somewhere, its binging.

 

Agreed on the weight comments. Usually you can "unscrew it" with a ratchet. It's not exactly threaded into anything, but the threads are probably caught on some part of the frame.

 

now there is absolutly no wieght on the lca bc i cut half of it off! and the bolt still doesnt move! ive tried hammering and tryed turning it to see if it comes out and nothing! im getting so pissed off at it! please anymore ideas?

 

drill it out, risky but might work, keep on hammering though

 

the problem with hammering is you cant really get a good whack at it..ive been trying and theres just no movment

 

mine came out without any problems so I didn't pay much attention, but from that picture it looks like there is enought space in there to just cut the bolt out if everything else fails.

I've just recently started working on cars, but I find that with everything being so old, cut-off tool is your friend. Those bolts are cheap to replace, especially when you compare several hours (if not days) of fudging with them. If the disk don't fit in there, you may try reciprocating saw (that method didn't have a chance to actually try yet).

 

Judging from the picture, I’d guess that the bolt is actually rusted to the sleeve in the bushing. Sometimes you can get them loose with a lot of pennetrant, heat and a hammer (air hammer is nice), but the last couple of times that I saw something like that I ended up having to cut it out.

Depending on what you’re willing to destroy in the process, the least destructive way (and not always successful) is to cut the ends off flush with the torque box, pry the sides of the torque box apart and then pry the piece down with another pry bar. Alternatively, either going straight through both sides of the bushing (I ended up having to do this on the body side mount of my PHR on one of my cars) will let it drop out, but will be nasty (you’ll be cutting rubber with the steel and the heat will cause the rubber to melt, stink and stick/cover everything). Alternatively, you could try a cutting torch or plasma cutter to melt the ends of the bolt out but that always makes me nervous about what else you’re going to screw up, and you’ll probably kill a plasma cutter tip using it for something like this.

 

get some cutoff discs and go nuts

 

id try soaking it wiht some pb blaster and letting it sit over nite then try to turn it out with a breaker bar and a cheater pipe worst case you break the bolt off which would help you out becasue at that point you would be left with pretty much no choice but cutting it out

 

Twisting it around will just loosen the sleeve from the rubber bushing, and once you get the sleeve loose the whole thing get’s 10x harder to work with.

 

That's what I ended up doing on my car after beating the crap out of those bolts for a few days. It works better then it sounds.

 

yeah, i had to do the same thing on my car as 83 crossfire and nape. i used a dremel with a cutoff wheel, yeah they tend to break, but its easy to get in the relatively cramped space

 

DONE! haha ill try and get some pictures of the aftermath..as someone already stated the bolt had actually fused with the metal sleeve inside the bushing..i ended up cutting and grinding the bolt down till the whole LCA just slid right out..now i got the new suspension bolted on n just need to bolt on the axle

 

I got frustrated trying to use a dremel and be precision, so I busted out the 4" angle grinder and had them off in no time.

If anyone ever does front LCAs, make sure to have a 6" angle grinder (or a 4" angle grinder with the guard removed and a 6" disc in it...). Makes the job a snap.