Hi,
I'm having a difficult time removing the front bolt on the lower control arm. The rearward bolt extracted ok after loosening the steering rack. The front comes out a couple inches and then hits what looks like a radiator support mount that prevents it from coming out all the way. I was going to try to split the front and back arms but the T60 bolts are stuck and won't budge. Anyone solve this problem? Will loosening the support give more room to remove the bolt? Any advice is appreciated.



Thanks,
Gary

2000 kx8 convertible

 

It is some time ago l did mine (memory not what it used to be) but as l recall it slid under that crossmember with a little downward pressure.
My car is a coupe though so no cross brace.

 

Hi, I just did mine to replace the bushings with Powerflex ones. You need to remove the front undercover and the bolt for the x brace. You dont have to remove the entire X brace, just the bolt in this corner. There was also a bracket for a tube under there I had to take off so the tube would move out of the way (I don't remember if is was AC or for oil cooler) I have a '06 convertible so I don't know if that's the same on yours. With the back bolt out you should have enough play to wiggle the front bolt out. I also had to use a drift pin (Torx screwdriver will work) to help drive the bolt out due to the rust on it.

 

Thanks to all who advised so far. I now have the lower A arm off and I extracted the ball joint today with a loaner tool from Advance Auto. (Huge C clamp with adapter sleeves.) The replacement joint is in the freezer and I'm going to heat up the arm tomorrow with a torch. The angle at the end of the arm makes it very difficult to use a press to get the new joint in so hopefully some hammer blows is enough. I cleaned the inside mating surface of the arm with sand paper in preparation.

I'll post the results when I finish.

 

Thank you for posting this- I'm having the same problem.

 

While the need to remove that support is a little annoying, it will add all of a few minutes to the job, certainly much less time than any possible work around.
edit, l should add, my car is a coupe so does not have the cross brace shown in the pic that may or may not complicate things.

 

here is a few photos not quite sure which Bolt to take off to slide things over.

 

As l remember it loosen the larger back bolt tucked up in the bracket hollow and remove those two at the front, the bracket should then pivot out of the way enough to remove the fulcrum bolt.

 

I removed the two bottom bolts, the t bolt for the oil cooler line and "slackened" the top bolt and it worked! Thank you so much. Here's a video to show the clearance.

I feel like this is a major page missing in the workshop manual for the lower arm bush removal procedure. Removing the bottom valence, plus the extra bolt removal and slackening. I suspect these extra instruction are purely for the convertible. Thanks again all.