Rear sway bar mount torn out - temp fix?

[plastrd]

The county closed a bridge near my work last year and left me two options to get around it: 1) an 8 mile detour on paved roads or 2) a 1 mile detour on an unpaved road. I'd go nuts driving the extra distance every day so I went with the short, dirty option.

This choice hasn't been kind to the Pfadt lowering springs and sway bars I put on back in 2011. I took the snow tires off and changed the oil and found the front right coil spring snapped. The broken ends were only held together by the vinyl tube coil isolator.



I thought they might have a lifetime warranty for this sort of thing but then I figured even if I could get a replacement, one brand new spring with 3 others having 100k miles on them wouldn't be a good idea so I dug out my OEM springs from the back of the shed. Spent all day yesterday cursing at the car while putting them back on and found another present, the rear sway bar mount was torn out of the lower control arm!



Is there any kind of repair I can do to this mount without replacing the whole lower control arm? I don't own a welder so I'm hoping for a bolt-on fix of some kind. The end link is captured between the bolted pieces but I can hear it rattle over bumps so it's just a matter of time before it comes free.

If it comes down to replacing the whole LCA, is this more complicated than the three bolts going through it? I know there's some kind of spring mechanism since I had a hell of a time keeping it bent down to get the shocks back in their mounts.

Cheers!

[hammdo]

Lca is pretty easy to replace. I'd do an Fe4 upgrade with a new swaybar and end links...

JDP helped me do that...

Just a thought, otherwise you'd need to add the support bracket to the FE3 version... Which I believe JDP or BMR can get you..

-Don

[Dizzy82]

This is the 1st mod I did when I learned about this issue back in 2011.

http://bmrsuspension.com/?page=produ...987&superpro=0

[plastrd]

Those bolt on reinforcement brackets are just what I was looking for so I ordered a set, thanks. LCAs are cheaper than I thought at around $40 apiece so I might as well replace both so it looks even. I'm planning to trade the car in by the end of this year so an FE4 upgrade won't be worth the investment, just want to get it back near stock.

[plastrd]

So $300 at the dealership later and I have one control arm and new end link installed. The inner bolt was completely fused to the bushing in the control arm and my cordless impact gun couldn't get it out, the rubber bushing just absorbed the impacts.

I thought I'd have the dealership do it and maybe learn something about how to get it out so I can do the other one. They had to cut it out with a torch! I recall this bolt being seized in the bushing since at least 2011 when I put my lowering springs on. I thought the control arm had some natural spring to it when I was trying to yank it down to get the shock absorber back into position but it turns out this isn't normal. The rest of the bolts came right out so something went wrong with just the inner ones.

Had I known they were just going to cut it out I would have busted out my angle grinder and sawzall and done it myself but lesson learned, at least I saved another couple hundred when it comes time to do the other side. I finally bought matching front tires and had them put on at the same time and alignment done so after all this expense the car quit its nervous shimmy and drives straight (older thread of mine).

[Norm Peterson]

Originally Posted by plastrd

I thought I'd have the dealership do it and maybe learn something about how to get it out so I can do the other one. They had to cut it out with a torch! I recall this bolt being seized in the bushing since at least 2011 when I put my lowering springs on. I thought the control arm had some natural spring to it when I was trying to yank it down to get the shock absorber back into position but it turns out this isn't normal.

Actually, that is entirely normal for OE-bushed control arms.

This 'natural spring' when the chassis-side bolt is tight is actually the spring rate of the bonded OE bushing in torsion about the inner sleeve that runs through it, as seen at the end where you're pulling down on the arm. And this actually adds a little wheel rate, maybe 10 lbs/inch or so, to whatever wheel rate that you get from the coil spring (which is about 90% of the spring rate up front, maybe half that of the rear spring rate).


Norm

[plastrd]

Originally Posted by Norm Peterson

Actually, that is entirely normal for OE-bushed control arms.

This 'natural spring' when the chassis-side bolt is tight is actually the spring rate of the bonded OE bushing in torsion about the inner sleeve that runs through it, as seen at the end where you're pulling down on the arm. And this actually adds a little wheel rate, maybe 10 lbs/inch or so, to whatever wheel rate that you get from the coil spring (which is about 90% of the spring rate up front, maybe half that of the rear spring rate).


Norm

Is there any procedure that would break the bolt free of the inner bushing without resorting to cutting it out? Granted the car has seen 6 years of salty Michigan winters I'm hoping to be able to do the other side myself someday. The springiness makes a ratchet and impact gun useless and there isn't enough room to turn a breaker bar very far. I did notice a hex shape on the end of the bolt but it looked like it was just begging to be rounded off if I tried to do a ratchet/breaker combo on it.