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rusty control arm attachment HELP


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My car's control arm mount (to body) is rusted--on one side bad enough that it's broken loose. My mechanic said he doesn't feel good about trying to fabricate something, but he said he might cut a decent section out of another car and weld it in. My redcar is a 2-door '96 Cutlass, the donor car is my $50 '92 Lumina 4-door. They look the same, and my impression is that the 1st Gen floor plan is the same for both cars. Can any one verify if this is correct?

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So the engine subframe is rotted out?? aka engine cradle.

 

They should be the same or at least identicle enough to use. I put a 00 or so Lumina in my 96 CS and there wasnt any difference.

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Maybe I'm using the wrong term, but I thought the control arm is what keeps the rear wheels parallel with the body and the axles perpendicular. I should have taken a picture. Anyway the area in question is at the front of the rear wheel well. There is a box section that the control arm mounts up into. All that sub-frame stuff is up front and the back of the car is all uni-body, right?

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Maybe I'm using the wrong term, but I thought the control arm is what keeps the rear wheels parallel with the body and the axles perpendicular. I should have taken a picture. Anyway the area in question is at the front of the rear wheel well. There is a box section that the control arm mounts up into. All that sub-frame stuff is up front and the back of the car is all uni-body, right?

 

trailing arm. i had the mount on the MC rust off... a good MIG welder fixed it pretty quickly.

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Honestly, I would just scrap the car at that time. To do the repair properly would take a fair amount of metal fabrication to do it properly. And thats assuming the metal around that area is clean enough to weld to

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I don't want to scrap the car. It has a 2002 LA1 with under 50K. The body is in very good shape other than these odd rustouts that happened (I believe) because a window was leaking before I owned it. I have a donor '92 lumina with good sheet metal in this area that I want to replace it with. What I want to know is are the 2- and 4- door bodypans the same (as I suspect from looking at them) so this could be a direct swap?

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So the floor pan is rusting out?
Not exactly...I took some pictures today while it was on the lift. I'll get them up soon. It's freaky how bad this one spot looks compared to the rest of the underside.
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"Don't crush em.......restore em"
I'm glad I'm not the only one thinking save it rather than crush it... My GTP needs some patches underneath.

 

X3; they're not making any more of them, and two-doors are in short supply in this neck of the woods.

 

My mechanic says he's willing to try it and I trust him. We're going for it. Will still try to get these pix up but new computers everywhere without the camera software yet.

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Here's the redcar's trailing arm attachment: carpix012.jpg

Here's the '92 Lumina's attachment after much banging and chiseling. carpix006.jpg It seems very solid.

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Wow that looks terrible underneath. All the best welding a new piece but I would seriously be wanting to get rid of the car shortly after. I should go take a picture of my Lumina's underbody - spotless and 20 years old now

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Dude, that thing need the entire unibody channel.. I like in NE Ohio and see plenty of rust, even on my own cars, but I wouldnt even mess with a car that was that bad. Even if it was the entire area.

 

Pull the engine and find a cleaner donor???

 

That unibody channel is an integral part of the chassis for rigidity. If your mechanics gonna do it, hes got a lot lot lot of work ahead.

 

The lumina doesnt look solid for long..

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I'm all for fixing it... but that Lumina isn't the car to scavenge from, it looks like it is well on that road as it is. Either find a newer cleaner car to scavenge from, or have a body shop fabricate new parts.

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Hmmmm. He beat on the Lumina for a long time and found no soft spots. I should have taken pictures of the rest of the underside of the Cutlass because most of it looks amazing.

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But the structural part(s) that matter are crumbling. Sorry man you can have something completely mint but still have it pulled off the road due to one structual area being damaged for whatever reason.

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mine was starting to get bad on the trailing arm perch area also. Not the strongest design by GM from the get go, and definitely should have been undercoated! One thing to think about, if that breaks loose, the back tire will take a trip into the wheel well and probably destroy all the suspension parts on that side(strut, strut tower and mount, swaybar, trailing arm etc). I have had the whole rear torn apart on my 96 Cutlass coupe (components wise) due to a bent trailing arm and a rotted trailing arm on the other side. With a trailing arm removed, you can easily force the entire spindle assembly from side to side(front to back). Now imagine with the weight of the car, a 15+" tire and rim and cruising along at highway speed and that sucker breaking loose from the underbody. A serious braking incident could break it loose also.

 

I definitely recommend if you have the resources and sturdy parts, fix it! But I don't recommend taking any shortcuts or driving too long like that, you might really regret it!

 

If you do fix it, post it up...Always helpful to see how these things go and cool to keep one of these from the crusher:thumbsup:

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when mine let go, it sounded and felt like a bad strut... no catastrophic failure or any destroyed parts other than the mount disconnecting from the frame.

 

and trust me, i still ran that car through corners like it was cool... and sitting in a meijer parking lot, i eventually found out that i could move the right rear tire back and forth without much effort... within a week, that problem was solved...

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