i am in the prosses of taking the front brakes off my car beacuse they are frozen in place and i need to move the car. i was able to get the top caliper bolt off but im having troble on the bottom caliper bolt. it seems that the steering is in the way and i cant reach it with any of my sockets. do i have to take the stearing off to get the calipers off?
thanks

 

I had the same problem when i replaced my front calipers. What I did was I made a wrench that fit in between the bracket and the stearing. I don't have a picture but I welded a socket to a piece of strap iron and grounded off the top of the socket to fit into the space. You could probably grind down and bend a closed end wrench and do the same thing. it may ruin a wrench or a socket but, It will be faster and potentially cheaper then removing the stearing

 

thanks, ill see what i can do

 

There are 2 bolts that hold the bottom of the shock to the suspension. You take out the one towards the back of the car and loosen the one toward the front. Then you can pivot the shock out of the way.

If I am remembering this backwards someone chime in, but I think this is right.

 

I did mine on saturday past

you have two choices


1) the long way

remove the sway bar end link from the control arm.
remove the two bolts joining the tension rod to the control arm
loosen the two bolts at bottom of knuckle arm which connects it to the front strut

the control arm can now drop and you can move the tie rod end out of the way (still connected to the knuckle arm) and so freely access the lower caliper bolt

2) the short way (but with lots of patience)

a socket/wrench will not fit in there. BUT..there is enough space for a spanner to fit in. You need the spanner with the close circle one end and open on the other end. Use the open side. slide in gently and you will see it will fit and you can get some leverage on it. Before loosening for the first time I suggest you spray that bolt with some penetrating liquid to help loosen it up. We have stuff here called Q20 which comes in a can which I spray on all bolts that I need to loosen.
Also, the bolt is a short 'stubby' as it were...so when completely loose it will still be able to slip out of that narrow gap.