Front suspension damage

["ksgrimsr" <knut.s.grimsrud@xxxx>]

I posted a note some time back regarding a failed front lower control 
arm bushing, and since I have it all out of my car I took a few 
pictures for those that might be curious about how the failure 
manifests itself. I uploaded a picture to the photos section under 
the "Front suspension damage" folder. Notice in the photo of the 
bushings how the inner sleeve of the bushing to the right protrudes 
in comparison to the pristone bushing to the left.

While doing the work on my one lower control arm, I also discovered a 
massive lower control arm failure on the other side of the car. I 
uploaded a couple photos of this as well since it looks pretty 
impressive (photos in same folder as above). To think I was driving 
on it! The failure is not a result of impact damage as it might 
appear, but is instead due to metal fatigue. The failed arm has 
hairline cracks/fissures in the material in several places and it 
appears to have failed along some of these cracks (there are 
additional cracks in several other places as well that are not 
visible in the photo). The arm has 160,000 miles on it.

Anyway, I thought some of you would enjoy seeing some photos of some 
of the failures that your front suspension is subject to.

Knut