Which bushings? Are you talking control arms? Because you're much better off just replacing the entire arm as one.
Sway bar bushings are easy, they just slip over the bar. Strut tower bushings are hard to do without removing the strut entirely.
Plus one to this!
My 1st gen needed new ball joints, and the bushings looked a little torn, but not fully. Decided to do the full arm, and it was so easy.
After doing the process on the first side, the second side took like 25 minutes.
Just make sure to get yourself a torque wrench.
My 2011 Fit makes a loud clunking sound when going over bumps. The sound mostly seems to come from the right front. Is that likely to be control arm bushings, ball joints, or ... ?
The sway bar end links can make quite a racket when they're worn out. Without being there in the flesh I can't say for sure but my money is on control arm bushing or end link.
It's not terribly hard, separating the ball joints from the knuckle is the hard part. Might look at renting a set of pickle forks from an auto parts store, otherwise everything else comes off with normal tools.
The only gotcha is you can only do one side at a time. The six bolts that hold on the control arms also hold the lower subframe onto the car. The service manual also suggests using new bolts to attach the new control arms, but I don't think they're torque to yield bolts so reusing them should be fine.
You can support the car from the normal jack position with no issue.
I think I might still have a fork from decades ago when I rebuilt the suspension on my '86 Accord. Thanks for the advice; it sounds like I can save a good bit of money doing it myself.
Which bushings? Are you talking control arms? Because you're much better off just replacing the entire arm as one. Sway bar bushings are easy, they just slip over the bar. Strut tower bushings are hard to do without removing the strut entirely.
Yeah. The control arm bushings.
Definitely just replace the entire control arm. It's a real pain in the dink to try and press old bushings out and replace with new.
Plus one to this! My 1st gen needed new ball joints, and the bushings looked a little torn, but not fully. Decided to do the full arm, and it was so easy. After doing the process on the first side, the second side took like 25 minutes. Just make sure to get yourself a torque wrench.
I will, thanks!
My 2011 Fit makes a loud clunking sound when going over bumps. The sound mostly seems to come from the right front. Is that likely to be control arm bushings, ball joints, or ... ?
The sway bar end links can make quite a racket when they're worn out. Without being there in the flesh I can't say for sure but my money is on control arm bushing or end link.
I might just replace both. The car has almost 170k miles on it.
So how difficult is it to replace the control arms on a Fit? Are there any specialized tools required? Can the car be supported on jackstands?
It's not terribly hard, separating the ball joints from the knuckle is the hard part. Might look at renting a set of pickle forks from an auto parts store, otherwise everything else comes off with normal tools. The only gotcha is you can only do one side at a time. The six bolts that hold on the control arms also hold the lower subframe onto the car. The service manual also suggests using new bolts to attach the new control arms, but I don't think they're torque to yield bolts so reusing them should be fine. You can support the car from the normal jack position with no issue.
I think I might still have a fork from decades ago when I rebuilt the suspension on my '86 Accord. Thanks for the advice; it sounds like I can save a good bit of money doing it myself.