broken rear shock bolt

[turbokid]

Boy was today a good time. I've been in the middle of an aspire brake swap and coilovers on my hunk of junk festy to get ready for a race next saturday and i broke one of the bolts that holds the rear shock on. Some of you may know the evil bolt in question. Anyways apparently this is common because the same thing happened to the aspire rear i pulled from the junkyard a few weeks ago. A simple 2 hour job at the junkyard turned into a 5 1/2 hour ordeal. Luckily i had a loose saws all blade in my tool box to cut the shock off.

Anyways i figured id share pics of the fun today.





ask me if i used anti seize on the bolts during reassembly

[TorqueEffect]

Yeah I am not looking forward to this myself. Because one of the bolts has been broken off since I bought the car, and it's rear struts are pretty shot at having over 312k miles on them. At least they are not bouncy, just a bit harsh

I personally would have just left the struts attached to the Festiva beam, and just unbolted it from the inside of the car, then just drop the beam out with the strut still attached. At least that is what I plan on doing.

Same with the Aspire beam when I finally get one from the yard, just drop it with the struts attached, then it would be a hell of allot easier working on getting that strut off when the beam is off the car.

[william]

Yep thats what I did then bathed it in pb for a few days before even attempting to pull the struts.
awh the life of living in the rust belt.

[Prafeston]

I know the feeling!

[Damkid]

I hate those lower rear strut bolts

[GenevaDirt]

had to work on mine a couple of months ago because of a seized bearing. I was loving it when mine came apart like butter.

[turbokid]

I really coulda used a saws all like that, really awkward place to be wielding an old hack saw.
What i dont get is how the passenger side came out no problem, they spent the same amount of time under the same car driving on the same crappy salt caked roads for the last two decades. Stupid festivas and their weird quirks.

[Prafeston]

Yeah, it was the same for me. Passenger side came out no problem. Drivers side bolt head snapped off. I had to borrow the sawzall from a friend and broke the first blade I was using.

[TorqueEffect]

Funny, the head of the bolt on the driver's side of mine is sheered off, but the passenger side is fine.

Why always the driver's side? Hmmm.......

[turbokid]

It's a conspiracy!!! Call Alex jones.