Rear Suspension Track Control Arm C5 X7 - Thread Problems

[julianb]

Hi,
I have just replaced the two aluminium Track Control arms on the rear suspension of my C5 X7 2008 Break so I can have 4 wheel tracking done properly. It all looked so simple - Two bolts, one into a captive in the body/chassis, one to the bottom of the cast Iron hub carrier - what could be easier? What on EARTH do they put on the hub carrier bolt at the factory before they tighten it??? Both sides it felt like I was ripping the thread out when I started removing the hub carrier bolts, and lo and behold when the bolt came out the first 2 cm of the thread was full of ripped off cast iron - but once you've started to remove it you might as well continue because the damage has been done. It appears there is some sort of loctite applied just to the end of the bolt.......

Having cleaned up the bolts, one side went back together OK - obviously the thread wasn't too badly damaged, and it torqued up OK. The other side was a different matter - it had stripped the thread completely! My only solution as luckily the hole in the hub carrier isn't blind was to ream out the existing hole with an 11.5mm drill and fit a longer high tensile bolt of the same diameter right through the hub carrier held in place with a washer, nut and locknut. Luckily the track control arm is held in place with a sleeve to ensure it's in at the right angle and the top of the hub carrier is easily visible and accessible to get the nuts onto the bolt you've pushed through........

Some may cringe at my solution but the only other option was new hub carriers - you can't rethread and put a bigger bolt back because it won't fit through the hole in the new arm.

Am i alone or have I missed something here - I can't see anyone else has had this problem?

[mickthemaverick]

A good solution but in future before applying excessive torque to a bolt try a good quality impct driver with a 6 sided socket. Often the vibrations can loosen up bolts which are resistent to continuous torque applied.

[julianb]

I couldn't get my impact driver under the hub....