Thread: Quick question on 4wheeler with seized a-arm bushes..

Hey, quick question I'm chucking out on here before I resort to cutting things apart - 4wheeler with lower a-arm bushes that need replacing and the bolts are seized completely solid in the bush inner tube...

Is there a great no-fail method to unstuck these? Compared to automotive and diesel machinery that I'm used to, these things are tiny and there just isn't any strength to lean on anything either. Very fiddly job, and I've already cut the other side a-arm off by grinding the back off a sabre saw blade (the bushes had collapsed totally on this side and the a-arm was flopping about so the bolts are seized completely solid). It's going to take a LOT of sabre saw blades cutting like that as all the stiffness is gone with the back ground off the blades. So it leaves me with the other side a-arm locked solidly into the machine and even less room to start attacking it as the bushes are still mostly intact on this side.

Thanks in advance for any ideas on this one, got me a little stuck haha.

fire?

Close. Sabre saw with a slimmed down blade and an ultra thin cut off disc in the cordless grinder.

Just gotta straighten everything back up and sort out a couple of busted welds, then its put it back together time. Not a very nice job, at least on full size vehicles you can get into the bush mounts with a standard sabre saw blade - I had to grind the blade down to the size of a standard hacksaw blade just to get it into position. That, and having to smack the mounting socket out of straight to be able to cut the bolt off, as the inner bush sleeves are hardened beyond what is really needed and the sabre saw was just shining the bush tubes up. All in all not a nice job. Thanks Honda.

Poor maintenance is not really Hondas fault is it.


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Originally Posted by muzza

this may help - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5wfWsTygvw

Looks rather political rather than mechanical?

Originally Posted by MSL

Poor maintenance is not really Hondas fault is it.


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No. But a little grease at initial assembly would have prevented that and wouldn't have hurt Honda's profit margins I'm sure. Using fully hardened bush sleeves and hardened bolts on something like that is a bit of an interesting design choice, given the chassis design is a total corrosion trap and the a-arm mounts are buried in crud. All that needed to happen there was place the plate on top of the chassis tubes, not underneath.
Compounding that, was the placement of the lower bolt securing the diff in the chassis tub - right between the swingarm mounts literally in the crap with no drains for it to get out.

At least on automotive gear you usually have room to get a standard unmodified saw blade into the thing without having to grind it down - the whole setup could easily have been made a lot more user-friendly so you could at least clean the crap out of it with a waterblaster. I agree with the 50Kg of cowshit comment too, it just made the job so much more fun.

Originally Posted by 6x47

Looks rather political rather than mechanical?

Thanks, I was scratching my swede on how that was meant to assist me!

I’m lucky I have a mate that will fix anything mechanical for me…payment is beers or smokes. He’s a good bastard.


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