Re: Front suspension damage

["Toby Peterson" <tobyp@xxxx>]

Knut - I'm sure that you're aware of the dangerous situation that you 
were facing with the cracked lower control arm (LCA). These types of 
cracks normally start at the welds where the sway bar attachment is. 
If the welds aren't properly stress-relieved after welding, residual 
stresses can lead to that type of failure. In your case, it was 
probably some edge damage or corrosion that helped start the crack. 
After the reports last year of cracked LCA's "in the fleet", we 
started to inspect the parts for cracks or other damage at every tech 
session. I can't stress enough the importance of inspecting critical 
components like this at every opportunity. In terms of the bushings, 
I have one bushing that is starting to exhibit the same deterioration. 
That's why I've been trying to organize urethane bushings. I keep 
running into brick walls with that ... companies seem to be most 
interested in profits "up front". This incident represents a "call to 
action" for everybody to remain vigilent when maintaining their cars. 
Thanks for sharing your experience with the List.

Toby Peterson VIN 2248
Winged1 



--- In dmcnews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "ksgrimsr" <knut.s.grimsrud@xxxx> 
wrote:

> 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.