Front Upper Control Arm Failure Fix

[92_talon_awd]

I have been rallycrossing my car in SCCA sanctioned races for the last few months and the offroading has been beating up my suspension. I broke a ball joint on the front lateral link my first time which was easy to fix. Last week though, I had a catastrophic upper control arm failure. I searched all over but couldn't find anything on it except for two threads that were short and unresolved. So after fixing it today, I thought I'd post pictures of my fix in case anybody else has had this problem. The problem was that the sleeve behind the strut tower broke through the fenderwell and the control arm was just hanging.

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Here you can see where it is broken and I've removed the excess sheetmetal that was hanging and buffed off the paint.

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View from the bottom.

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Here I tacked the "sleeve" in place on the top and bottom holes and underneath. I then cleaned up the welds.

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View from the bottom.

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I made a template out of cardboard and then traced it onto a piece of steel.

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Removed the strut assembly and then really cleaned up the area good.

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My brace after cutting, bending, and drilling a 3/4" hole in it to allow the control arm to bolt up.

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I used the bolt from the control arm and installed the brace, tightening the control arm bolt with the impact, real tight.

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Beat the upper piece into shape with a mini sledge.

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Weld Time

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2 Coats of 3M underbody coating to weatherproof.

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Found a washer that was the same thickness of the steel bracing and put it on the front to equalize the height difference.

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Aligned it and done! Note I had a previous negative camber up front due to Eibach drop springs. No biggie to me, probably correct the issue with eccentric ball joints in the future.

 

[Black95TSIawd]

fantastic job on the rebuild.

Do you really only run 1 negative degree of camber up front? How do you like it?

 

[92_talon_awd]

Thanks man, when it happened I was really dumbstruck. This is the first time I've had a problem with a car that wasn't easily fixed by a trip to the parts store so I'm really pleased with how it turned out. The camber issue is solely because of the eibach drop springs. At least that's what I think, what do you/most others run?

 

[Joethefallen23]

I had a very similar problem, although not so severe. That's just catastrophic. So much water gets trapped in these strut towers..... My sleeve also broke away, but from the front mount point on the pass side. The control arm was still held in by the strut tower itself but when I hit a bump, you'd hear the worst clunk imaginable. I thought it was a damn bushing....boy was that a crappy day.

 

[92_talon_awd]

I think if I keep racing it offroad I'm going to go ahead and brace the front and back on the left and right so I don't run into this problem again. I don't think the upper control mounts were designed with this kind of abuse in mind.

 

[PieEyedPiper]

Great job fixing and reinforcing that area. As a bonus, you've also slightly lowered your a-arm eyelets.
It's pretty silly how fragile it looks from the factory. Are you going to brace the top portion of the tube as well?

I'm loving -3* camber up front. It's surely more than I need for a DD but I wanted to try it out and the results were significant.

I had a very similar problem, although not so severe. That's just catastrophic. So much water gets trapped in these strut towers..... My sleeve also broke away, but from the front mount point on the pass side. The control arm was still held in by the strut tower itself but when I hit a bump, you'd hear the worst clunk imaginable. I thought it was a damn bushing....boy was that a crappy day.

Dang. Well there's some food for thought. I've not been able to track down a sort of clanking sound that sounds near the top of my front driver's well. I don't track and beat the car at all but it is on shitty suspension that isn't often kind in return. At least I have some direction the next time I look for the source instead of randomly unbolting shit and wiggling on things and never finding the culprit.

 

[92_talon_awd]

Thanks. It looks extremely fragile, especially when you get to look at that cutaway type of view. I think with the bottom braced that well it won't really need any reinforcement up top. Of course if I'm wrong, I'm going to find out the hard way haha. If it keeps breaking though, I'll start considering swapping all my stuff over to a nice 1g roller.