holy shit what a catastrophe!
a 45 minute job to change the rear sway bar turned into a whole day job.. everything that could of went wrong, went wrong
considering my car is 14 years old and everything underneath is rusted.. needless to say, one of the bolts to the bracket that goes around the sway bar bushings broke off inside the bracket bolted into the frame
went to strauss and bought a broken bolt removal kit, which are actually drill bits but the threads are reversed
anyways, i used a drill bit to drill into the broken bolt to start a small hole for the bolt removal bits.. then guess what, the drill bit broke inside the bolt... back to square 1 again.. so then we(friend helped out) used a bigger bit and started to drill into the bolt to help smooth out the top so we can start over
after we grinded down the top part of the broken bolt, we then used another drill bit to start a small hole into the broken bit & broken bolt... bingo got a hole! soo now we popped in the bolt removal bit and started drilling... guess what THE BOLT REMOVAL BIT BROKE IN
[email protected]#$
anyways, to make a long story short.. we broke the small drill bit and 2 of the bolt removal bits.. so then i went to kmart and purchased Titanium coated drill bits and started drilling away.. needless to say, we had 3 broken drill bits drilled into each other inside the broken bolt... which made it very difficult to drill into even though we got stronger bits this time
anyways, we gave up after 6 or so hours of this never ending battle, left the broken bolt inside.. bolted the bracket back to the frame.. eased the new sway bar in there, put the polyurthane bushings on with lots of grease, bolted the one side of the bracket of the passenger side(the side where one of the bolts broke off) and used twistie ties to help secure the otherside plus the 3rd bolt to the vertical control arm.. bolted the 3 on the driver side.... and then took it for a test drive to see how it holds up with only 2 bolts on passenger side(i was going to temporarily keep it this way til i get it to a shop where they can drill it out for me or see if the dealer has a replacement bracket that holds the bushing up on tuesday because i dont know if there open tomorrow which is memorial day)
anyways, after driving around, it was fine for 5 minutes until it started clunking
surprisingly the twistie ties held up but not the one side of the bushing bracket, it bend the whole thing and almost straightened it out
so what we then did was cut all the twistie ties off, wrapped a towel around the sway bar on the passenger side where its clunking against the fuel tank and used twistie ties to keep the towel from moving
then used a loose twistie tie to the control arm so it doesnt move around much
its fine if i drive around carefully and take turns slowly.. but on tuesday(or monday if anyone is open which i doubt) im gonna take it to a local shop or the dealer(if they have the part in stock) and either replace the bracket or get someone to drill it out for me i had enough of this shit already
this project would have been great if that god damn bolt didnt break..
Lession to all of you with older cars and rusted bolts.. be very VERY careful not to break them off! what a pain in the ass
okay now let the laughing begin cuz i know some of you are probably laughing your asses off at me
