Control Arm bent when our teenager hit a curb...hard.
The bolt that attaches the arm to the sub frame will not come all the way out-hits engine. Does anyone know of a trick to get it out and back in?
It's a 1993 4 door Accord 2ws.
Thanks, Steve.

 

try loosening up the 17 mm bolts that attach the rear cross member as much as possible but do not remove them , it will bring the cross member down , control arm is attached to cross member. it should give you enough room to remove the bolt .

 

Where ever you have rubber bushings and a metal bracket that gets tightened in place to hold at the rubber bushing, you should do the last bit of tightening with the car on the ground, actually with the weight of the vehicle on that tire to neutralize the pivot inside if the rubber bushing.

If you have the car on a jack and the control arm is hanging down fully, then you snug it all together, when you put the tire on the ground you will stress the bushing as the control arm raises as the car is lowered, then when you hit a bump and force the tire up even more, you will overstress the rubber bushing.

It should be tightened in a neutral position so road response bouncing the lower arm up and down, it is stressed evenly in both directions as designed with a limited amount of stress. I know many technicians who do not follow this procedure and it may not break for a long time.