DIY Fail.

So our 1st stop on our road trip was Suffolk to rescue a rejected Honda Civic. My bro-in-law got reamed at inspection for both front lower control arms and a front motor mount (among other things), so we thought we have a repair party since the labor costs were going to be...high.



Step one: remove the sway bar links.
Anyone who's removed sway bar links on a car with more than 10 miles on it knows that you put your sockets back in the toolbox and grab a hacksaw. After expending way more energy than those little bastards are worth, the front suspension was free of the sway bar and it was time to start undoing the lower control arm mounting bolts. Oh yeah, add new sway bar links to the parts store list.

Step two: remove control arm bolts
Our longest breaker bar with the jack handle slid over it gave us enough leverage to turn the front mounting bolt on the control arm. Wonderful, progress! Yeah, not so much. The bolt had frozen to the metal sleeve of the bushing, so we were turning the whole bushing. I'll avoid the gory details and just say that I'm pretty sure we'd have needed a cutting torch of sorts to beat this one...

Step three: drive your broken sh*t to a mechanic.
So we reattached what we could, tied the sway bar into a fixed position, and drove it to the professionals (who said things like, "they're just not fun to work on anymore" and "that's the risk you run when you try it yourself").

Step four: saddle-up!
So there we were, feeling beaten. Adam's got a bike; we had a trailer with two motorcycles on it...



Chalk up one more Saturday in Suffolk.