Compstall

About a week or more ago, I noticed fresh black rubber on my left front tire edge, indicating a rub. Looked inside and found this:



I did wonder how that happened, but the car has been driving fine otherwise; no pulling of any kind.

Today, I was going to the store and noticed an occasional light popping sound. When I got back to the house, I jacked up the car and wiggled the wheel at 3 and 9 o'clock positions and did get a bit of wobble out of it. Nothing out of the 12 and 6 o'clock positions. Tie rods and ball joints looked fine (I've changed those out in the last year or so).

I had an extra hub in the garage and thought I'd just swap them out and see what happens. Before I headed back to the garage, I took one quick glance over at my lower A-arm and saw this:





Crazy stuff. Never seen nor heard of this one before. My car hasn't been to ANY track of any sort in over 2 years, just daily driven 4 miles back/forth to work and the occasional errand around town.

jpack24

Wow, that could have gotten really ugly!

Compstall

Yep, it sure could. What's wierd is, except for the occasional popping sound the car drives just fine. I think the beefed up sway bars, springs, and bushings mask quite a bit of it.

bluz28

Wow!, you're lucky! Good thing you caught when you did.
You better check the passenger side too!
It looks to me like that urathane bushings must be to stiff and caused the a-arm to flex too much and caused stress fractures.

Compstall

Could have. They've been in there for over 5 years now.

Injuneer

Did you heat the end of the A-arm to get the old bushing out? Makes me think I better go check mine... they've been in there for almost 10 years now.

And is that the Energy Suspension polyurethane bushing? The one with the design that is modified from the stock piece?

Compstall

Yeah, used a torch to get the old ones out - 5 years ago. Could have easily been the problem. I can't remember which bushings I bought. Got them from Thunder Racing - they were either Energy Susp. or Prothane.

shoebox

Good thing you found that now. It never hurts to occasionally eyeball everything under your car.

Compstall

Finally got around to changing out the A-arm today. Here's the rest of the carnage...

Capn Pete

Wow, that's scary dude!! Glad you caught the problem in time!!!

The way it was broken, you probably wouldn't notice much wrong when driving/accelerating. Even under braking, the weight of the car would push into that arm, and you likely wouldn't notice much either . However, good thing you never drove really fast in reverse! ... coulda ripped that thing right out of there!!

ZZ

Looks like it was cracked for a while from the amount of rust along the split. Also looks like rust around the bushing. Did you heat the arm to get the bushing out, or just the bushing shell?

Compstall

Just heated the bushing shell.

dangalla

hey, at least the bushing is still in good shape

Injuneer

Appears to be the ES bushing, with the upper "cup" sliding on the lower portion of the bushing. That is quite a bit different than the factory bushing. I wonder if the added stiffness of the polyurethane, and the revised loading to the A-arm is a faulty design?

I'm very interested, because I have the same setup, and don't plan to drive the car until I check the A-arms.

Compstall

I cannot confirm or deny, but I remember when I installed them they were so tight they almost felt like they didn't fit in there. I had to use a large C-clamp to squash the bushing halves together in the hole so the a-arm would fit back in the K-member. I still had to work pretty hard to get it back in the car.