Say it with me: "Bushing Bracket Bolts!"

Any one ever strip or break a bushing bracket bolt when swapping out their rear control arm bushings? I'm going to be swapping mine out, and I bought the full poly bushing and bracket assemblies from Way Motors, but I'm a little concerned about the possibility of snapping the bolts trying to get them out. How concerned should I be? Should I just throw my big-mama-jama breaker bar on those things, and twist them out?

 

Stuck my big honking breaker bar on the bolts, and they reluctantly came right out. Rebuilt with poly control arm bushings, and poly sway bar bushings.

 

Soaking the bolt holes from underneath with your favorite penetrating juice helps somewhat.

Once the bolts are a couple of turns off their seat, flood the bolts from the top with more penetrating oil.

I'll be doing a FSB upgrade in a month or so. Do you find it worthwhile to completely remove the subframe?

I replaced the bushings a while back just by lowering the rear of the frame, that makes it a real pain to unwind the bolts on the bushing brackets.

Not really obvious which approach is the least effort.

 

Once I had the bolts loose, I hit them with the impact to get them all the way out. I would definitely suggest dropping the whole subframe. The little bit of additional effort to drop the subframe will definitely be worth it to make it easier to get the bushings out.

 

I recently completed a full poly conversion on my 2010 R55. Surprisingly I did not encounter a single bolt removal issue anywhere on the suspension. Amazing considering that my car has seen a few Canadian winters.

 

I did the "hit it with penetrating oil and an impact" thing. My car has been a VA/NC car for its whole life, so a generally gentle life, and it wasn't too bad. I'm super-conservative with bolts that might strip/break, so I'd be very strategic/careful about breaker bars, and wouldn't use a cheater.

I tend to hit bolts multiple times over a few days if I think they're going to be grumpy...