has anyone tried to remove the front lower control arm from the r56? it's a pita, for sure. i bent mine in a little curb accident and am replacing it plus the rubber bushing. we tried dropping the subframe but the exhaust gets in the way and the bolt connecting the motor mount to the subframe doesn't want to come out. any help?

 

Any luck on this topic?

I'm about to do the same - for the same reason. I have discovered that mine is bent to the point that I cannot fully disengage it from the outer ball joint. With the suspension (strut) fully compressed by lifting the hub and pushing down fully on the arm, the outer end simply won't go far enough down due to it being bent. At this point I plan to get the cut off saw out and cut the arm into two pieces. Then I have to figure out how to get the front inner part of the arm disconnected from the inner ball joint and low enough to clear it while I slide the arm out of the rear bushing. Should be fun. I've done multiple sspension rebuilds, etc in the past on Hondas, Fords, Nissans and BMWs, and this one is so far the most cumbersome disassembly I've faced. I hope it is due to the bend and that installation will be a bit simpler. It would be nice to have a few factory tools lying about.

 

if this is an r56 issue, then we're somewhat more lucky than r53 owners when it comes to changing control arms. i finally figured it out:

-since the front and rear subframes are independent of each other, it is only neccessary to drop the front subframe
-remove the front bumper (alta has instructions with pictures on how to do this for installation of their intercooler)
-remove the mount behind the bumper
-place jacks underneath the subframe on each side of the car
-remove all the bolts connecting the subframe to the cars chassis except for the motor mount bolt.
-remove the nut holding down the control arm ball joint to the subframe
-disconnect anything else connecting the control arm to the subframe
-here's the tricky part: the control arm is connected to its bushing which is in a metal bracket; removing the control arm from that rubber bushing is damn near impossible while your working in the wheel well. the control arm is connected to the bushing frame with two bolts. The bolt on the left should be fairly easy to remove; however, the bolt on the right is a pia and no wrench will fit in that small space. I got a little clever here and sawed off most of my 16mm wrench until i had a keychain sized wrench to fit in that small space. I then used this shortened wrench to remove this last bolt. Now the control arm still connected to the bushing and the associated bushing frame should all slide out.
-To disconnect the bushing from the control arm, I used a blowtorch to melt the rubber and lessen its integrity.
-I then locked the control arm frame into place and rotated the control arm 360 degrees until it ripped out of the rubber bushing.
-to get the bushing out of the bushing frame, i had to take it to bmw so they could use their special tool (which they charge .5 hours of labor for btw).
The worst part is..my control arm wasn't even bent. if your looking for an r56 s front lower front control arm (drivers side), pm me and ill sell it for a goood price.