First day of suspension work [Archive] - Honda Element Owners Club Forum

: First day of suspension work


tangboy5000
12-15-2010, 06:15 PM
and it didn't go well at all. Parts got here at 1 p.m., so I figured that is plenty of time to get going on the rear suspension. Pulled it into the garage, loosened the lugs, jacked it up, put the jack stands underneath, removed the lugs, and that is when the problems started. It took me like 45 minutes to get the wheels off they were really stuck to the hubs. So wheels off lets go. Spray bolts on upper control arms, shocks, links with PB Blaster. Try to get the bolt out of the upper control arm and nothing.
Got out the 20" breaker bar and almost snapped it trying to loosed the bolt. Heated it up with a torch and nothing. Heated from one side with the torch and held the candle to the other to draw wax in, still nothing. At this point it's getting later and I need to start putting my stuff together to go home.
I figure I'll replace the rear sway bar bushings real quick since the car is in the air. NOPE. First bolt head snaps right off. Then when I try to pull it the rest of the way through it won't budge. So I hammer it, nothing. At this point I'm like WTF, the hole isn't threaded why won't this move. I broke it loose and that is when I saw that the nuts are welded to the bracket. I've come this far so I continue. Next bolt breaks off, again bust the nut off. Both bolts on drivers side have much more rust than passenger side, but they both come right out, so I don't know what that's about.
I run to AutoZone in my dad's car to get new bolts for the bushings, they have them ( #
8s by the way) and I come back and get the brackets and new bushings put back in. YEA

Now before I go after the rest of the suspension with the sawz-all of infinite sharpness, are the nuts on the upper arms also welded to the bracket? They appear to be so I figured I would ask.

tangboy5000
12-17-2010, 06:54 PM
Yesterday was a snow day, so I started in again today. There is just no point to using any kind of penetrating oil, heat, or any combination of rusted bolt breaking techniques on the rear suspension of a 7 year old car from the rust belt. It's absolutely pointless. I got one bolt of the upper control arm free before spending the rest of the day rounding off the head of the bolt holding the shock absorber to the lower control arm. I'm going to just go at it with my sawz-all on Sunday. If I cut through the bolt on both sides inside the bracket I should be able to remove the whole unit and then hammer the two pieces of bolt out of the bracket right?