broken upper control arm shaft bolts

[3ohh2]

driving thru a hard turn i separated the rear upper control arm shaft bolt on the front passenger side of my 66. pop'd off loud as hell and the stang pulls all the way to the right and will not drive straight. tried to make a left, couldn't, shut it down. had to have it towed back . the upper arm is now hanging on by the front shaft bolt and now my spring is sitting about 20degrees forward.

i guess my question is how do I go about getting the threaded bolt shaft out? any technique to drilling it out... never done it before on something like this? has anybody ever heard of this happening before?

I rebuilt the whole front end about 1500 miles and must have gotten a defective bolt because it is pretty thick and don't see how this could be the weakest part of the front suspension. The lower arm looks to still be sitting in place correctly so I think an upper shaft rebuild kit will take care of it, however, since i upgraded the front end to be stiffer, are there stronger bolts I should be using?

any other ideas on this?....... thanks.

 

[CraigMBA]

You should be able to unbolt the spring perch from the control arm (with the shock still installed - DO NOT REMOVE THE SHOCK UNLESS YOU COMPRESS and REMOVE THE SPRING BEFORE YOU TAKE THE CONTROL ARM OFF) unbolt the other side of the cross shaft, and swing the control arm away. That bolt pressed in there, you may be forced to take the arm off to hammer it out, but you should be able to do it with basic hand tools.

Be sure the cross shaft moves easily before you reassemble it. If the nuts are overtight it will "bind" the shaft, causing a host of fun problems, including non stop squeeking and eventual failure of the shock tower. If you have to back off the adjusting nuts, you'll need to retack the nuts to the shock tower with a MIG welder or have somebody do it.

Frankly, even if your cross shafts are perfect, you probablly should tack them anyway. I've had several come loose and back off over the years.