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Broken control arm bolt removal

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Flybiyou

20+ Year Contributor
304
3
Apr 8, 2003
somewhere, Illinois
So as I was taking apart the whole front end suspension off I snapped the long bolt that holds the lower curved control arm to the car frame. I only got a 1/4" out b4 it snapped at the head. I have been wondering how I'm going to get this 3" long bolt out and thought I would ask for some advice from you guys.
I was looking at it for a hour while I pounded my head off the garage floor wondering how I'm going to get these out. I can't use heat as there is no way to get a flame in there as well as any PB blaster. I am sure I am going to have to drill it out but even after I drill it through there's still a chance I won't get the whole section out. The threads are only at the top about a 1" long so that's the highest spot.

I also snapped the smaller bolt on the opposite side of the car as well. Was the only 2 bolts I had problems with. These bolts were in bad shape. Any help or ideas would be much appreciated and thanks in advance.
 
So I hate when people don't post back on what they did to fix things so I will give my fix to this situation. Hopefully it's good if not let me know to anyone that has been through this b4.

The control arm I am talking about is number 40320AL in the pic. The curved 1. Drivers side . The short bolt that bolts into the subframe snapped. This is the bolt closets to the outside of the car. I first tryed to drill it out and retap to a 12mx1.25 but was not straight enough and was not going to work. I then drilled out the hole again with a 1/2" bit and retap with a 14mm x 1.5 thread not 1.25 pitch. Couldn't find the drill bit for 1.25. I had to drill out the flat part of the control arm to accept the new bolts size which didn't take much off 12mm to 14mm. The only issue I had was when I went to retap the hole I was not able to go as far as the other bolt by about 1/4" plenty of meat left on the bolt for the required torque though. This is also a temp fix so I can drive it till I pull the motor and build. I will then remove the subframe and weld in a new sleeve for the original bolt size and pitch.
 

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