PapeCAT

I broke an upper control arm in a parking lot, bumped into one of little cement things at full lock and "pop". I replaced the '89 control arm with one from Loco1's 1992 he gave me. and he guess what - the place where mine broke? His had a factory doubler right there, !! Well at least they learned.

Nevertheless I drive the truck like it has dry pasta for metal.

jeepsuck

so i took the suspension off (which was actually quite easy) and removed the lower control arm bracket.

with the control arm mount removed:





After about 5 minutes of judicious hammering with a 3lb sledge and a good wire wheeling:








and here is something to clear your mind of this unspeakable atrocity so you can sleep easily at night:



on the bright side, i noticed that the X member is removable. if i can locate a junkyard piece i will definitely consider replacing it completely. I've already called dodge and it is discontinued

Richie O

Wow!! Thats bad.

wannadiesel

That was really bad! It doesn't appear to have been caused by rust, it just split wide open. I gotta crawl under mine and look for cracks tomorrow...

PapeCAT

Honestly how hard did you really slide off the curb anyway. That is some major carnage! Check out this video of these guys off roading a 1989 dodge d350 diesel dually... Maybe yours was put through the same treatment X ∞ at some point in it's life, compromising the structure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moc2u58Vv_0

Richie O

Maybe his truck was one they dropped from the roof in the commercials.

PapeCAT

rofl I remember those commercials, but only of the 1994 2nd gen. They went on and on about it saying things like "This truck has a frame SO STRONG that we had to patent it."

jeepsuck

ROFL at that video! those dodge guys are crazy! i shutter to think of what it would be like to catch air in my W250. maybe they were springier when new, but if my front end left the ground completely it would come down in a seriously hard way.

i actually didn't even slide off a curb, i drove up a driveway in reverse. the damage was done long before...

i'm pretty sure that it was the bad ball joint that did her in, as stated previously.

it was my fault, i ignored a ball joint issue, it pulled on the lower control arm and started the carnage.

speed75

you could weld that up but i would deffinetly put a backing in there and dont use 6010 it is not a piece of pipe solid wire and 7018 are about same strength

Richie O

Its hard to tell by the pictures but maybe the bolts were loose. Kinda looks like the holes are oblonged and then split due to movement. It still looks like that should only happen in a crash. Good thing you were not flying down the road.

jeepsuck

those were not bolts, but rivets.

Here are the pictures from 2006 when i had the bad ball joint. you can see that the hole in the control arm was hogged out toward the inside of the vehicle. as the upper pushed inward it naturally pulled the lower outward. this caused a seriously adverse load on the lower arm mount.

the moral of the story is: FIX YOUR BALL JOINTS EARLY!!

Richie O

O, rivets. Did it look like they were working around? Maybe you couldn't tell.

jeepsuck

they were probably working around, it would certainly explain the oblong holes!

jlibert

the truck is mad at you for trying to off her on cl

From looking at the pic, I don't see why you couldn't weld a new plate in place of the one that is torn off. It shouldn't require pulling the engine.

sshort

with a fire wench & a welder you can fix any thing