Auris MK1 Lower Arm Replacements

[tommy59]

The lower wishbone / control arm bushes on my 2007 Auris 2.0D4D started to go resulting in vague steering and crashing over bumps so I decided it was time to replace them with a new set.

Now, what should have been a 1-2 hour job turned into 12+ hour job due to Toyota's poor design of captive nut.

I tried to find some information on why I couldn't get the bolts undone from the front of the arm but couldn't find anything on my issue so I'll detail it below for anyone else stuck with control arm replacement.

On the front bolt for the arm water gets in between the bolt and the inside of the bush in the arm corroding the two together. Although I was able to turn the bolt with a 2m breaker bar I could not get it to move out of the hole. The captive nut for this bolt inside the frame is not welded but held in a cage. When the bolt and bush corrode together the bolt can't move outwards and the only movement causes the nut to push backwards out of it's cage resulting in a non captive nut and a spinning bolt.

For me the easiest thing to do was to replace the frame with one from a breaker which took about four hours to swap everything over.

Subsequently I've managed to remove one arm from the old frame by cutting into it, heating the bottom of the bolt with a blow torch and rocking the bolt with an impact gun on the other end. The other one is still stuck fast. Terrible design!