Author Topic: 2003 honda fit control arm  (Read 3677 times)

guest7053

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2003 honda fit control arm
« on: August 05, 2017, 04:41:06 PM »
curious to know if this model has upper and lower control arms... a mechanic informed me the previous owners spoiled the arm and that is causing the bushing on the passanger side to repeatedly tear..

sparky Paul

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Re: 2003 honda fit control arm
« Reply #1 on: August 05, 2017, 06:11:26 PM »
It's a conventional MacPherson strut with a lower control arm, or wishbone as it's commonly called.

No upper control arm or wishbone.

guest1372

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Re: 2003 honda jazz (fit) control arm
« Reply #2 on: August 05, 2017, 11:27:31 PM »
It's the rearmost bush that deteriorates but it's only a £10 part.  Not always successful as it may work loose so replacing the whole arm (£30) may be a better bet as it is quite a simple job - if you can undo the bolts and the nut on the knuckle.  The original arms have a castle nut that is easy to round over even with a decent socket as there is not much metal to bear on so cutting may be required, the replacement has a larger nyloc nut.
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CRC

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Re: 2003 honda fit control arm
« Reply #3 on: May 21, 2020, 12:42:15 PM »
Those pictures are really useful to me as I tried to change the lower suspension arm last week and failed dismally as I ran into the totally seized 17 mm nut on top of the ball joint and just gave up and left the old arm in place.

I've now got a couple of new 32 mm drive shaft locking nuts and am planning to attack it again in the same way that you did by pulling the drive shaft out of the hub and disconnecting the arm from the car so that I can put the drive shaft on top of the hub and get to the offending nut either with a disc cutter or some serious heat - which you just can't do with the drive shaft in place.

Just one question - I know that the drive shaft nut is done up to a serious torque ( 134 ft lbs I believe) but once undone, are there any issues with the splines seizing in the hub requiring a puller of sorts to pull the hub off the splines?

Thanks

CRC

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Re: 2003 honda fit control arm
« Reply #4 on: June 17, 2020, 02:16:54 PM »
Just finished fitting control arms to both sides of our 53 plate Jazz, and found the following - luckily I had the use of a two post car ramp that made life a lot easier, but still took more than a day to do.

1. Ball joint castellated nuts - one side totally seized, the other side just came off as it's supposed to.

2. Undid the 32 mm drive shaft nut on the seized side but totally failed to free it from the hub, despite some serious blows with a chunky copper faced mallet. How hard do you have to hit these things to get them to shift?

3. By undoing the two bolts on the chassis end and dropping the control arm, I had just enough space to get a  1mm stainless disc cutter disc in and cut off the top of the seized ball joint bolt and nut, which undid very easily after that.

4. Used a "tuning fork" type ball joint separator to separate the ball joints, but it did require some serious thumping before they popped. Not sure how well they would have come apart using the classic "thump them on the side" method. Those ball joint separators will wreck the rubbers, but in this case, new ones were on the control arms so no problem there.

5. New control arms are a bit fiddly to slide into place, but then they just seem to glide into place and you wonder what all the fuss was about when they do.

6. But the biggest problem I encountered which wasted the most time, was me not realising that the M12 nylock nuts which had been supplied with the control arms had a 1.5 mm pitch while the threaded section on the ball joint had a 1.25 mm pitch. I reckon I wasted 2-3 hours trying to get the nut to tighten up because I was assuming that it was the nylon insert that was making it hard to turn, where as it was actually the nut trying to go cross threaded.

Monday morning I got the right nuts and the job was a doddle after that.

Moral of this story - never assume, never trust anybody and check everything!!       

sparky Paul

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Re: 2003 honda fit control arm
« Reply #5 on: June 17, 2020, 04:47:56 PM »
Sounds like you've been having fun

M12 nylock nuts which had been supplied with the control arms had a 1.5 mm pitch while the threaded section on the ball joint had a 1.25 mm pitch

Pattern parts do throw you the odd curve ball!

The 'whack it on the side with a hammer' method never fails for me. The only problem is when you need to split a balljoint on your own - you could do with an assistant to bar down the wishbone, while you thump it.

The only thing I can say about siezed stuff... heat is your friend. Any source, gas welding torch, grinder, stick welder, anything that gets the bolt or nut hot, preferably glowing. Up to M10/12, even one of those high temperature butane torches beloved of chefs will work wonders on a nut, and make freeing nasty brake pipe unions a breeze. Very handy things when you're stuck.

Jocko

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Re: 2003 honda fit control arm
« Reply #6 on: June 17, 2020, 06:10:10 PM »
My son-in-law left the hubs attached but it was a fiddle to get the control arms slid into place. Especially working under the car on a dark winter's evening!

CRC

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Re: 2003 honda fit control arm
« Reply #7 on: June 18, 2020, 08:45:17 AM »
The only thing I can say about siezed stuff... heat is your friend. Any source, gas welding torch, grinder, stick welder, anything that gets the bolt or nut hot, preferably glowing. Up to M10/12, even one of those high temperature butane torches beloved of chefs will work wonders on a nut, and make freeing nasty brake pipe unions a breeze. Very handy things when you're stuck.

I absolutely agree, and that was the reason that I was trying to get the drive shaft out so that I could rest it on the top of the hub to allow me to get a flame onto the seized nut. With the drive shaft in place, I felt that the rubber CV joint gaiter was too close for comfort and would probably end up melting in places. Luckily there was just enough room for the disc cutter with the control arm disconnected and hanging down, so the cutter was probably the safer option.

It's quite surprising the heat that a blowtorch can generate these days. There is a mix of gases called MAPP gas that works in a common blow torch and can generate a a flame temperature in the region of 2,020 degrees C which will start things glowing red quite well.

I was amazed at the effect of heat a while ago when trying to separte the catalytic converter exhaust studs on a Porsche Boxster. There were only three M8 studs, the nuts had long ago rusted away but the "tool steel splined" studs had corroded so much that the flange was stuck solid with no leakage at all. Those things defeated all attempts to punch them out or drill them up, but after a quick heat to cherry red followed by quenching with water, they just "fell out". 

culzean

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Re: 2003 honda fit control arm
« Reply #8 on: June 18, 2020, 10:24:52 AM »
The heat and sudden quench breaks the hold of rust - can use heat to deactivate threadlock as well.   I find cobalt drills useful for harder materials,  also use LH spiral drill when drilling out studs and drain plugs,  as the drill turns it is trying to unscrew the thread - I have seen people fixing motorbikes where a drain plug has seized and head broken off use a normal RH drill and during the drilling it has screwed the plug into the engine or gearbox, then it gets real messy.....


These are useful - I have a couple that I use for plumbing ( prefer soldered fittings mainly,  but always use a few compression ones to allow stuff to be removed and replaced easily ) - they protect other stuff in the area if you need to solder stuff in-situ.  Come in useful on the car if you need to use heat anywhere - a bit like space shuttle tiles LOL

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B005GOP22Q?tag=duc08-21&linkCode=osi&th=1&psc=1
« Last Edit: June 18, 2020, 04:29:17 PM by culzean »
Some people will only consider you an expert if they agree with your point of view or advice,  when you give them advice they don't like they consider you an idiot

CRC

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Re: 2003 honda fit control arm
« Reply #9 on: June 18, 2020, 03:06:26 PM »
That looks a useful piece of kit .... think I'll get one of those as undoing ancient nuts and bolts is becoming the major issue when doing any work on older cars these days, and we have three cars with a combined age of 53. Thanks for the info.

culzean

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Re: 2003 honda fit control arm
« Reply #10 on: June 18, 2020, 04:28:09 PM »
Worth getting some single hexagon sockets of a decent quality as they are so much less likely to 'round off' the corners of nuts and bolts - may well snap the bolt before head rounds off  :o
Some people will only consider you an expert if they agree with your point of view or advice,  when you give them advice they don't like they consider you an idiot

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