As I was leaving my house for a nice summer cruise I felt the rear end shake and the car went a little sideways. I wasn't on it at all just turning into slow traffic. I Got out and saw the lower right hand forward bolt must have broken as the arm was hanging down. I also heard and hear a scraping noise. Will I have to disasemble the rest of the attachements( bolts, shocks, spings, etc. to get things back aligned or will I be able to move the rear with the weight off the car to realign without disasembly? Any ideas about the noise?

I am surprised, I just replaced rear control arms the other day on my el camino. All the bolts still looked solid but I replaced them with grade 8s anyways.

I dont think one bolt loose will be tha hard to line up. If you are going to check all the other bolts I would do one control arm at a time, but that is just me.

As for the scraping noise, couldn't it have just been the control arm scraping the ground after the bolt broke?


Matt

I had this happen to me a few years ago in my 69 as I headed to a car show. I was on the freeway( only had driven the car a couple times prior) in the fast lane when the rear end started to get loose at 65 mph! I slowed down not sure what was happening, gave it some throttle and the car almost hit the jersey barrier!:eek: It was a good thing it was an early Sunday morning, not much traffic. I was able to get it to the shoulder. I looked under and saw that the pass rear lower control arm had lost a bolt were it attaches to the frame. the control arm was almost all the way out of the frame, I at first thought I broke an axle. I had a good friend of mine bring a jack and a new grade 8 bolt. I was able to jack the car up under the pumpkin, and give the tire a good push with my foot and it went back in. I put the bolt in, tightened it up along with all of rear control arm bolts and off to the show I went. Lesson learned...check and double check that everything is tight and especially before and after you put some miles on your car.

you should be able to get a new bolt in there with out much trouble.

Happy 4th!

chuck.

thanks. Used a "comealong" and got things lined up. I found the bolt in the frame. It fell out ( not broke due to the loss of tehnut. The scaping turned out to be the drive shaft hit the hanger shield I had installed.

Lesson learned...check and double check that everything is tight and especially before and after you put some miles on your car.



AMEN! While trailering my car home yesterday a sway bar link came loose and fell out, I guess because the car was bouncing the nut backed off.