The battle against the lower control arm of doom!

Hello reader(s),

Well, I got a little fired up and responded to a question on the team-integra.net forum with a how-to.  So I figured I would post it here.

So here's how I ended up tackling my lower control arm nightmare.   The most important thing I can emphasize is soak all bolts with PB Blaster multiple times over several hours.

Do not wrench on any bolts down there until you proceed to soak the shit out of them and let the PB Blaster soak over several hours.  Trust me patience will pay off.


Crusty threads may slow you down, but they are not the major problem area for Honda lower control arms. What you will find is that the bolts rust to a steel sleeve in the control arm bushing.

Use an impact wrench to break bolts lose or a breaker bar with a small sledge.  DO NOT just lean on a wrench and pray. You'll find the bolts snap rather easily with that approach. The bushing will wrap as the bolts fused to it twist and SNAP.  That's what happened to me.

I snapped the lower shock bolt. It amazes me that a hardened bolt can snap with a bit of man strength.

I ended up hitting my two remaining bolts, one at the subframe... and one at the rear trailing arm... with an impact until they started smoking. They didn't budge much but the heat broke down the bushing.  Then I used a breaker bar to rock the bolt until I totally destroyed the rubber bushing.  Then the bolts came loose from the nut. I then had to cut the bolts in two adjacent places so that I could remove the trailing arms.

If you have to cut some bolts still threaded into the nuts on the body make sure you give yourself some room to get vice grips on the remaining bolt. I say this because if you cut the bolts too close to the nuts welded to the body the job will get even more complex and you will need to drill and tap the nuts.

I ended up cutting the shock fork instead of cutting the bolt so that I could remove the abs line.

Bolts you need to replace have a thread pitch of M10x1.25.  You should be able to find a grade 8 in that size somewhere near by.  Also it would be smart to get a tap to clear out the threads on welded nuts.  I found mine were impossible to rethread because they were so crusty.  Once I tapped them it was butter.

For cutting I used a right angle die grinder with a three inch cutting disk.  I sawzall would work but you need to really lift the car up to fit it under there.


Go ahead and snap the sway bar end link bolt and the abs line bolts.

Also IMO, just get new LCAs.  Rock auto sells them for like $50 or $60 a side and they are new, painted and have new bushings.  Also the threads are clean.

Here is the aftermath from my removal.