Front control arm, pitted rear spindle?

[joOse]

I just removed my passenger side lower front control arm to replace the bushings and ball joint and as I pulled the rear bushing off the spindle I found it to be all pitted up? It almost looks as if it was beaten with a hammer? The control arm itself is in good shape other than a little rust. Is the bushing spindle supposed to look like this?

 

[SlowChild3]

I seen you went and bought new already. I'm going to grind the rusted shaft to the same diameter and weld a sleeve over the old. I think i'll torch braze the sleeve on to fill any voids then cap it off with a small fusion tig weld.

 

[joOse]

That sounds like it should work and be strong enough to me. I hope it works out for you. I had thought about doing something similar but not as in depth as your plan. You should definately document every step and take plenty of pictures and do a full tech write up on your idea as I'm sure plenty of 1g DSMers would benefit due to the fact that this is such a common problem with our control arm spindles. If for what ever reason, your idea doesn't work, i did a full review of this problem. Here is the link if you are interested. http://www.dsmtuners.com/forums/art...t-lower-control-arms-dorman-vs-raybestos.html Good luck to you and keep us posted.

 

[bjones18]

water/salt at the bushing/metal interface corrodes the metal. Bushing slip removes the rust, and polishes the result. The random nature of this process (and metallurgy) leads to pits instead of a uniform degradation.

If you weld in this area, keep an eye out for cracks developing over time and usage. Welds in tension/bending tend to crack at the root of the weld. This region (suspension) tends to have fatigue type loading. You may have better luck if you "peen" your weld while it is cherry red. This is similar to forging and puts the surface of the weld in compression... which can lead to increased fatigue life.