Working on cars is fun, mentally stimulating and saves you a bunch of money in the process. Performing regular maintenance of your brakes, engine, transmission, and differential by replacing oil, extends the life of your vehicles. For major jobs like a full suspension overhaul, replacing your lower control arms or tie rods, you need to prepare to battle rust. Rust is a huge pain when working on your car, as the bolts and parts seize together making it virtually impossible to remove.

To counter rust, be prepared to apply some type of softener like wd40 or pb blaster for several days prior to the job. This is usually enough however for older vehicles, the rust has wielded those parts together. Its hard to believe it until you see. It gets bad! At this point, you need to apply a lot of heat to the bolt. In theory, the expansion and contraction causes the parts to break lose of the rust. I recently encountered a case where neither heat nor pb blaster were sufficient. I was forced to cut off the parts using a sawzall(an angle grinder).

Car manufacturers excacerbate these issues as they don’t grease bolts during initial assembly. If you are buying a new car, take some time to apply wheel bearing grease or anti-seize to all your suspension bolts and nuts. If you can buy bolts with greasable zerks, that’s super! 100000 miles later or sooner, your future self will be thankful.