A-arm servicing

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divisii

Member
I used to own a vintage (ie. old) domestic (GM) muscle car & actually snapped the ball joints a few times while driving aggressively. Questions - Anyone ever broken an A-arm or ball joint on a Civic? I'm told the balljoint's unserviceable & meant to be replaced as-a-whole .... so, any idea what is the life expectancy on these A-arms?
 
Well my old blue CRX was made in 1988, has 218k miles and was driven hard. The A-arms are the stock ones.
 
I have heard a few people snapping ball joints on civics and typically total or fuck up their car royally because their car tends to veir instatly into a ditch.

However, they are servisible, however, typically you need to take them to a shop to press them out. When you take the a-arm out, on the top side of the ball joint, there will be a cover. Remove this and you will see a snap ring. Take the snap ring out and either beat the living hell out of the ball joint until it pops out or take it to a shop and have them press it out.
 
To add to this, in my above post, I was talking about the lower ball joint. The Upper ball joint is non servicable and to replace, you must replace the entire upper control arm. You can find them relatively cheap on Ebay. The final ball joint, the tie rod ends are replaceable. All you have to do is loosen a jam nut, then take off. When you put it back on, you'll have to get an alignment.
 
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