Seized Bolts and Bushings on 2011 Mercury Milan

[Jonathan Nicoli]

I have a 2011 Mercury Milan that I’ve been dealing with for the last two weeks.
To start, I had a bad bearing on the front passenger side that caused two of the wheel studs to shear off so I began the process of replacing the bearing and the hub. After about 2 days of fighting with the rust (from Iowa) and renting tools I finally got down to the bearing only to find it was completely seized into the knuckle and wouldn’t budge. I then decided to just replace the whole knuckle with a preloaded one with a new bearing and hub but ended up dealing with both of my control arms being stuck inside the knuckle. After a couple more days I was able to get the knuckle free but the bushings from the knuckle were stuck to the control arms and would not come off. I popped out the bushings from the new knuckle and tried to just reuse the old bushings but I couldn’t manage to get them into place. Having little else to try I went to replace the control arms and this is where I am stuck.
The bolts on the control arms are completely seized and I have spent two days spraying PB Blaster all over them and hitting them with the impact to no avail. On top of that the bolts on the metal bracket that spans along the car are also seized and won’t move so I can’t get to the bolt on the rearward control arm.
If I could get the old bushings off the old control arms I can just run with it because they are still good, however in the process of removing them from the knuckle I did damage the rubber boots (pryed them up with a flathead and can’t get them back down). Or I can somehow get the control arms off and replaced by either cutting the bolts (which I am having issues finding replacements for) or actually get the bolts free and reuse them.

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