So, this weekend I finally decided to get ambitious and install my coilovers. Things went to hell pretty quick between shearing heads off of bolts and the bushings becoming chemically welded to said bolts. I ended up buying new control arms and bolts from Acura ($401 later…), but that is kind of the least of my worries at this point. While I had every thing out I noticed that the upper control arm was no longer tightly secured to the car. I went to try to tighten one of the bolts and to my surprise it just spun with the anchor nut occasionally grazing the body. My question is how do you access the anchor nuts to replace them, and if that’s not possible what is a potential fix that will be safe?
Pictures for reference:
(please excuse the mess, it had been sitting since October and not thoroughly cleaned before parking)
Unfortunately you have to cut into the unibody so that you can weld the “nut” back in place or put a nut on the end that you can hold with a wrench/socket.
So I got the forward L/H bolt to tighten up after some cleaning on the wire wheel but no joy on the aft one. Looks like I’m going to have to punch a hole to get access. My plan is to go slightly forward of the strut tower. Does anyone see any issues with this idea such as catastrophic failure due to punching a hole into a frame rail?
No the frame rail will be ok as long as you do it neatly and weld it back up after. I would suggest just using a hole saw like 1 inch above the bolt. Then you can weld the hole plug back in after. Or try cutting just the head of the bolt off and get the control arm out of the way, then try to tack the nut back to the body from the outside.
Well today I put on my big boy pants and punched a couple holes in my car. Luckily I guessed pretty damn close to where I needed to be with the drill and then I went to town with the die-grinder. Started out with a 1/8" drill bit to be a pilot and to confirm I wasn’t wildly off the mark then bored that out with a 3/8" bit. The right side was easy due to the anchor nut deciding to disappear into the frame rail. The left side on the other hand required a bigger hole due to the need to get the massive 19mm box end wrench in there. On the right side I replaced the anchor nut with a ny-lock 10x1.25mm nut and some blue lock tight to make sure it stays put.
Pictures because they explain better about what needs to be done… Don’t over torque your upper control arm bolts!!
Left side access (sorry for the dirt, she’s developed a few air leaks in her 22 years)
