Anyone want to see some catastrophic control arm failure? :)

Well, here it is.

The car drove just fine (or so I thought..) right up until this happened. It was marked with a great wobbling of the car when I let off the gas. Fortunately when it happened, I was less than half a mile from home, so I coasted on into the driveway and this is what I was greeted with, now a week later (Christmas delayed my shipping of new parts...)











Replaced that one with a new one. Just need to replace the other one tomorrow (ran out of daylight...).

Whoa.... That looks bad. Are... were the control arms that rusted, or do you beat the tar out of that wagon?

Did all your new tools help?

Mike

They are (were) that rusted. The car, as I later found out, was originally purchased in Pennsylvania. Because of this fact, I've basically given up on the dream of a REAL paint job, and will just drive it into the ground and replace it with a nicer LT1 car after college (that's a year and a half away... I better start saving!)

And yeah. Without the impact, that sucker wouldn't have come off. At all. lol

Remind me to never let you drive my wagon.You are hard on that poor wagon and its not going to take it anymore.
Jim

Nah, I'm not THAT hard on it.

Weren't there any cars in the junk yards?

If you get an 800 watt generator, from Harbor Freight, you can use your new power tools at the junk yard. The generators are only $100 this weekend. They will run for 4 hours on a gallon of gas. You could make some money on patch panels with an angle grinder and cutoff wheel. A couple of rear quarters, and you have your money back.

The impact gun is battery powered. There was ONE B-body in my local yard, and it was a RMW, but its control arms were messed up too.

It's okay, I made the money back from buying the arms with other yard finds. I have to say, it's actually been FUN learning and doing this repair (although not having my car for a week was depressing... lol)

Fred,power isnt the problem.Young Ray is afraid of the dark!
Jim

i used to tear the upper control arm bolts out of the frame with 4 spd cars,. i,d have to weld plate over the hole to reinforce the chintzy factory frame,.
course a big block, 10" 3200lb clutch, some decent gears and set of MH's will do that,..

Nick

Made one hell of a bang didnt it?
Jim

I suddenly feel the urge to go grab a pretzel.

Nice work on the repair, man! Now go out and beat the snot out of it to remind her who's boss! And repeat daily. I do.

Need to do the other arm (well, don't NEED to, but figure I have it, and it was easy, and I'd be willing to be the other isn't in much better shape... except maybe not all pretzely), then it'll get driven.


Also need to squeeze time in there to do my leaky rear main seal. THAT repair scares me.

Not to bring up an old thread from the dead, but that arm didn't really fail "catastrophically". It held together, and allowed you to maintain control of the vehicle until you were able to get off the road. Catastrophic failure would mean that a part broke in two, or something of that nature.

Fair point. I did limp home with it (three blocks), but man was that an unpleasant ride.

Stingroo wrote:

Need to do the other arm (well, don't NEED to, but figure I have it, and it was easy, and I'd be willing to be the other isn't in much better shape... except maybe not all pretzely), then it'll get driven.


Also need to squeeze time in there to do my leaky rear main seal. THAT repair scares me.

I put some stuff in my engine and my rear main seal leak stopped in 2 days (5 hours of run time for it to start working). It is just for main seal leaks. I got it from a buddy of mine who works for what used to be Bumper to Bumper, and is now Parts One (I think). It is about $22, but it works. It is about 4-8 ounces of thin liquid that you just dump in your engine. He is going to get back to me on Monday with the name.

Stingroo wrote:

Fair point. I did limp home with it (three blocks), but man was that an unpleasant ride.

The whole idea in designing safety in a car is to engineer ways to keep things together as best as possible in the event of a failure. In your case, for all we know, someone could have previously mistakenly put the jack underneath the control arm when they lifted it, which would have weakened it. One time, a doofus kid at a gas station lifted the front end of my AMX by putting the jack right in the middle of the inner-to-outer tie-rod clamp. It kinked nicely, but didn't snap. People are stupid.

Holy crap. That's super dense.


Fred - thanks. Found my oil leak actually wasn't the rear main, it was the oil filter adapter, but only when the car was moving (it seemed) so it spewed oil rearward.