Z28barnett

I am in the process of replacing most of my suspension with 1LE parts.

I was doing this in part due to the fact that two alignment shops could not align my car or tell me what was wrong.

My car is a 1995 Z286spd with 90 k miles. I assumed that the bushings were gone and that was causing my problem.

I have been checking every part as I took them off, and until yesterday I had not found a problem.

The bushings are in O.K. condition and tierods/balljoints were ok.

Upper shock nuts where rusted no flats or anything left. Just muddy red rust and flakes. Bottom of the shock tower on the inner fender was begining to rust also and will have to be repainted.

The surprise was the rear front lower control arm bolt. It was frozen beyond anything I had ever seen. After about four hours of pounding with sledge hammers, heating with a Mapp torch, generous aplications of PB Blaster, breaking off the locking tang, I finally got it out.

I am explaining this because the frozen bolt affects the adjustment of the lower control arm and will prevent proper alignment.

The nut came off easily so an aligment shop would think they had loosened the bolt and would attempt to adjust the arm.

The sneaky problem is that you have is the top of the bolt is still clamped. The head of the bolt has not loosened because it is trapped by the rust swaging the shaft of the bolt to the metal center of the bushing.

This means that the arm will not slide and half of your adjustment is defeated. The shop will not know why and in my case they will assume that they have reached the limit of the adjustment. The shop even said that their camber/ caster tool was bending. After removing the bolt I see why.

There is an easy way to check for this problem. If you can't get enough adjustment to do an alignment. Have the shop try to remove the front and rear bolts, one at a time. If they come out easily you are fine and have some other problem. Also if they can be easily tapped part way up and down, you are good. If not, consider your options because this was a very hard job. I had the springs out, so if you are checking with the springs in that may make the test impossible.

The front lower control arm rear bolt was rusted bady over it entire length where it fit into the center of the bushing. It showed no visable sign of this problem. The front bolts looked brand new and could easily be removed.

I think the heat and PB Blaster helped the most. Pounding didn't seem to help much until the bolt started moving. You may want to work on this over a few days and give the pentrating oil more time to work.

I have learned this the hard way and still have two more bolts to do.

I have now completed both sides and the second side had the same problem. Only took about 2 hours of heat and pounding to remove the front passenger side lower control arm rear bolt. The front bolt on both sides was plated and showed no corrosion. I wonder if GM had a batch of bad bolts?

I hope this post will save the owners of camaros time and money on suspension and alignment work.

Front LCA Bolts/Nuts

P/N: 10229835 front (2), 10164163 rear (2), 353773 nuts (4).