Short drive gone bad
 

My son decided to get his Mom out of the house for a "fun" short drive. It didn't end well. Tire was sliced open, tie rod bent, shock blew out and of course the obvious. Luckily one of the rare times he wasn't going fast and on a back road. Never had one break at the ball joint before.

https://forums.maxperformanceinc.com...ictureid=13834

https://forums.maxperformanceinc.com...ictureid=13835

https://forums.maxperformanceinc.com...ictureid=13829

WOW!!...I have never seen that....I am now going to inspect all my cars in AND around that area!

Brake hose is junk too. From the bottom photo, it doesn't appear as though there was a crack starting. Would need to see the broken metal from a different camera angle.

That's strange, never seen it like that. Maybe someone jacked it up there in the past and caused a crack to form? Or an oversize ball joint pressed in that stressed the area?

Did this not just happen to someone else very recently, pulling out of his garage, or something like that? I remember seeing pics of the same broken control arm...?

Found it...https://forums.maxperformanceinc.com...d.php?t=838970

Good thing no one was hurt.

WOW! That could've been a lot worse. Never seen that happen before.

Had a wheel bearing seize on the freeway in my buddy's Chevy pickup once. That was seriously scary, but at least the wheel stayed pointed in more or less the right direction...

2nd case this year so far on this forum.

At least the damage looks minimal considering such a massive failure.

Happened to my son driving a Monte Carlo, while he was coming down an on ramp to the Interstate at about 50mph ! Not much you can do but hang on hope you don't hit anyone.
Flat bedded home and fixed the damage.

I'd be very curious to know if those are reproduction arms .. I notice where the paint is missing I see relatively clean smooth metal underneath .. that would be very rare on original OEM arms.
Something about the shape of the arm in the second picture doesn't look quite OEM to me, too straight on the back edge.

While not common, its not unusual. The Chevelle forums have numerous threads regarding cracked or broken factory lower arms. It usually occurs at low speed or backing out of the driveway.

I had mine inspected and refurbished by Glen Lever.

https://www.lever-family-racing.com/

I witnessed one break on a 1960 Caddy Coupe Deville pulling into a driveway ... like an explosion.

Makes me wonder if the stress is from the hard stop contact pad being pressured by the tab on the steering arm? If drivers have a habit of turning hard into the limits of the power steering it could possibly cause that stress.

Quite notable though is the lack of rust in the fracture, suggesting the entire fracture is fresh.

I haven’t had a control arm break but I have had the lower ball joint stud pull through the housing on a 79 T/A.

Wouldn’t the heating of the control arm with a torch when replacing the pressed in ball joint affect the integrity of the control arm at that point? Perhaps it was “overheated” at some point.

Fender Paint all good?
Rim good?

I wonder why anyone would beat the control with a torch?!?! No reason to do that. Take them to a machine shop and have them pressed out and new ones pressed back in.

Not everyone does things the right way. Just a thought. . . .

A ball joint press is not expensive. A small price to pay to do it right.

Tough lesson to learn by not doing it the right way. Loosing your GTO or life to save a couple bucks is a bad idea.

Yep, no other damage luckily.

Atleast no one was hurt and no damage, pretty lucky.

Glad everyone is okay and the damage is repairable.
This same failure happened to my 67 GTO to the previous owner. The underside of the front frame crossmember had gouges, the core support and fenderwell had some mangled sheetmetal from the "loose wheel". Messy failure.When I restored the car I noticed one lower arm had the classic junkyard yellow marker writing so it was a used replacement. I try to keep an eye on those arms once in a while.

Damn good thing he was driving at slow speeds, that would have been bad otherwise. Never seen a failure like that! Time for some inspecting seeing how I have an 1 1/4 swap bar on front and have pounded my car pretty hard.

Imagine if it happened while hard on the brakes at 60 mph.

Yep, glad no one was hurt and no major damage.

This, and the earlier one, have something in common... Loose endlinks.
Poly is tough, and if you let it have a running start, it will pound the hell
out of anything in it's path. And check out what the bolt did to the arm.

http://forums.maxperformanceinc.com/...1&d=1587950241

X2. The ONLY time I have seen A arm failure on A body GM cars over the past several decades is when the stock rubber bushings were replaced with poly bushings. No thank you.

I have seen that on a Cadillac . wide radial tires put more load on that area than it was designed to handle .

I also don't see how a stiffer bushing or loose links could affect loads at the location of the failures. Seeing two broken in the same location is unexpected though. Wonder why they both broke there? The design must have highest stress at that point or there is a forming defect. I think the near-identical location of fail shown in both images is not a coincidence.

Neither photo shows much bending around the fracture. This is also surprising to me. I would expect the break to start along the bottom edge as you say, propagate up, then have the whole arm bend up. I wonder if these arms were made of something stronger than low-carbon steel?

I have 69 H-O LeMans that I bought new. When it was about 2 months old I went to the local McDonalds, while standing in line to order food a big bang went off, I turned around to see what could make such a loud noise. It was my car and the rt. ft. was on the ground the rt. ft. upper "A" arm was broken in half and just about the same distance as your car from the ball joint. The car had less than 2K on the ODO. Under warranty the car was towed to the dealership. My buddy worked there ( he's the one who did the PDI on it ) and he told me that this kind of thing had happened before.

when first formed there are some ripples in the metal, if these ripples are smooth at the edge , but if there are rough or a jagged edge that is a possible point of fracture my bet is with this situation

if the end links caused this then the crack would have gone to the end link hole.

I agree with Scarebird, don't blame the poly bushings.


I would think that this has been cracked for a while, and slowly increased in size until it finally broke all the way off.