Broken bolts changing front wishbones…

[breeze]

Nice easy project. B6 front arms, S3 rear bushes and standard fronts.

All going smoothly until one of the 16mm bolts on the rear bush carrier snaps. Move to the other side and same again. Two snapped bolts. Not good.

I am aware that I can get the side wishbone mount parts of the subframe separately, but I must say I now have a fear that the bolts for fitting those might also snap. Looking at the heads I can see that they have all been refitted at least once. Maybe a clutch or something. For the record I almost always replace stretch bolts with new.

Bright ideas? Going to start with a stud extractor and have one coming in the next few days. Failing that time to brave the other bolt.

Maybe time to drop the subframe and attend to all of the other jobs? Pendulum bush, ARB bushes? Hmm…

[pudding]

If it's just subframe threads and not the captive nuts in the body, consider yourself lucky.

Heat. Lots of heat. Lots of penetrating oil.

[LC5F]

That exact same number of snapped bolts happened to mine ages ago.

I ended up getting the part subframes out, small enough to fit in the oven, heated it to over 200 degrees C - with a really big pair of vice grips on the nubbin of the bolt - I tried melting candle wax into the thread, penetrant, everything under the sun and it would not undo.

The issue is the galvanic corrosion creates powder in the thread, you may get a turn or two out of the bolt before it jams solid - leaving one choice, drill them out - or replace with used ones, for speed I went with the latter option, the new bolts (BTW - Febi kit on ebay is good and cheap) are slathered in anti seize and tightened as much as I could dare.

Last time I checked these were pretty cheap at less than £20 a side, suspect it would save a lot of swearing/drilling

[breeze]

Yep, I’ve ordered both sides from a breaker. I’ll replace all the bolts with new. With power tools pulling them off is actually quite easy.

I’ve been trying to decide whether to fit subframe collars for a while (I have a kit). Given it is all apart I think I will go ahead and fit them. My main concern is messing up the camber. Let’s see how that turns out…

[LC5F]

I have Chinese collars on mine, they can be tricky to install as you need to put bolts in a bit art a time, so not quite the same as before
Thinking about it now it may be the side sub frames may be slightly off creating the misalignment - next time I drop the subframe I will try loosening these too, being loosie-goosy may make it easier to bolt up into position.

Here is a link to the Febi bolt kit, I have had the same type of bolt from genuine & febi. I am convinced they are the supplier for the genuine VAG bolts, I doubt you could by one bolt from VW for the price of all 3 in this kit: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/173629442750

Last pointer - mine is DSG, unsure if manual box create the same problem, when I came to tightening the bolt at the front of the Left control arm I found the mechatronics box completely blocking a torque wrench getting to it, even a crows foot wouldn't work here and undoing the dog bone didn't give enough room either. I would suggest tightening that bolt off the car.

[breeze]

Thanks for that. I’ll get prices from VW for bolts and then decide. I have the bigger bolts already from the subframe kit.

Manual for me luckily.

I’m also going to have a go at replacing the ARB bushes whilst it is all down. Going for Powerflex which should stiffen things up a little.

Has anybody gone that route? Brackets look like they need to be drilled. Looks painful.

[breeze]

All done. Quite a time consuming job on your back if you are doing inserts and new bolts all around at the same time.

Some observations from me:
- With the cars the age they are, I think you should have a backup plan for the console bush bolts snapping before doing this job. Highly likely they will break and you will need one or both side parts to the subframe
- I’d strongly recommend replacing all of the bolts with new (they are single use stretch bolts) and using plenty of copper grease.
- Fitting the Powerflex ARB bushes was straightforward but you must drill the bracket out. 12mm bit for that.
- My car was tracking perfectly straight before (with geo done 18m or so ago). After fitting the inserts it still tracks perfectly straight so I’m not worried about big changes to geometry.

Overall the car feels slightly tighter at the front end so I am happy. As the other post, I did Passat arms with new bushes too.