Tension rod/Sway bracket??!@#

[pete240]

Has anyone else ever had their tension rod/sway bar brackets come loose on them? I had been hearing some squeaking and a slight clunk under braking lately and today I finally jacked up the car to see what the problem was. I raise it up and jiggle the wheels and such to see where it was loose but couldn't isolate the problem. I then spun the wheels as fast as I could then had someone slam on the brakes for me while I looked on the bottom and sure enough I see the drivers side tension rod bracket shift forward. Naturally my first solution was to grab the trusty torque wrench and tighten her back up to spec. I quickly realized it wasn't going to be as easy as just that. The problem at hand is that I am unable to tighten the nut and bolts because they just keep spinning on my and I can't stop them because the frame rail is completely sealed at least it seemed that way to me. Please give me some ideas on how to remedy this problem :o .

[Clarkbar]

ok there is several ways you could fix this the best way (i think) is cutting circles on side of frame EXACTLY above where nuts are. then a) remove old nut and replace with new nut with lock washer or b) hold down nut with something ie channel locks or something of that sort. the welds they put on those break when old and have stiff ass suspension, impact or just hard driving. good luck its some work.... again my opinion!!!!!

p.s. if your worried about the integrity of the frame, it will be ALOT safer to fix the prob than to leave it like that... hahaha

[pete240]

Yea I figured I was going to have to open up the rail and I will more that likely end up going this route. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

[Camo]

just tach the bracket on or weld the bolt back to the frame

[mazdarati]

i believe that happened on matts, there was a hole that someone else already cut in the frame but it was a little to small so we just opened it up a bit then tightened it. if you are concerned about integrity of the frame, just cut a piece to fit over and weld the bolt where it needs to be then weld the plate over the hole.

[Cattman]

indeed. did happen on my car. if youre worried about the integrity of the frame...dont drive a 15+ year old unibody. :)

[pete240]

well I bought bought the tools I needed to make the access holes in the frame rails :D. She should be good to go this weekend. I'll post pics when it's done... Don't ask how much the mandrel bit and holder cost LOL

[Cattman]

Im guessing $14 for the shank and $8 for the hole saw....

[pete240]

13 and 8 but I accidentally bought the wrong shank the first go around which was another 14 bucks. I thought it was a little silly for some pieces of metal but they sure make it easy to fix my problem:D. They had some pretty big holes saws that went up 40 bucks haha...

[pete240]

Well I got finally got to working on the car and she is now fixed :D. No more retarded clunk on braking and the sway now sits securely like it should. I put a bore in the frame rail above the nut and just wedged a screw driver to stop the weld nut from spinning then just backed bolt out.

[pete240]

Old weld nut


The nut and bolt got replaced by a m10-1.50x50mm bolt and m10-1.50 nut. They both had 17mm heads to so they could grab more surface .

[Clarkbar]

Good job man glad everythings good, looks like it'll hold up for a while