DIYbanter - View Single Post - Folloow--up on car t hat needs right rear lower control arm.

micky

On Sat, 25 Oct 2014 22:36:25 -0400, wrote:

On Sat, 25 Oct 2014 21:13:35 -0400, micky
wrote:

Technical stuff at the asterisks ******

Follow-up. I bought the right rear forward control arm for my 2000
Toyota Solara at a junkyard** for $50 (He said he had 24 of them!) but
found that the bolt head was in a "bowl" and I couldnt' remove it.

**Thank you car-part.com

Then was stymied when Firestone (and of course Toyota) wouldn't do the
job unless they could buy a new part. They wouldn't even do it if I had
the receipt from Toyota dated yesterday, or if I waived the warranty on
the work. I began to wonder if I'd wasted $50!

But I went to Autozone and a sales clerk there had glowing
recommendations for a guy at PepBoys and a place on Rt.e 40.

The guy on Rte. 40 had a hand made sign out front, Alignment 50 dollars,
for sure the cheapest in town, and his labor estimate was a firm 105
dollars, lower than Firestone at 121 or Toyota at 210. I lost his
business card and had to call the Kentucky Fried Chicken next door to
find out the shop name. (the KFC girl was very nice, walked to the
front where there was a window.) When I googled his shop to find the
phone number, I saw that there were google reviews. I liked the google
reviews. They were mixed, Ironically, it bothered me that they were so
cheap.

The Pep Boys labor charge otoh came to almost 205 dollars, although that
included a 35 dollar extended warranty which I wouldn't need on a part
like this, that doesn't do anything, and wouldn't bend even when I
wacked it with a mini-sleidge,

So one was too high and one too low and I wasted a day trying trying to
pick one of them.

Then I remembered the shop a half block past pep boys, that had an
excellent reputation, that our eminenet County Execitive had tried to
condemn by eminent domain to build either nothing or another private
business. Fortunately he was stopped, but the jerk still got elected
to Congress. This was maybe 10 years ago. The shop has been in
business now for 60 years.

He wouldn't give a firm estmate but said he thought it couldn't take
more than an hour at $80 an hour. Droip it off at 6AM.

******
7:45 he calls me to say that I have a choice of his cutting off the bolt
and using another one for 165, or doing it the way the manual says for
265.

He said he'd called Toyota and they had one 18" bolt in stock and he'd
already sent someone to pick it up. For all that, he didn't call me to
say the car was done until 4PM. If they were working on it all that
time, he said nothing to indicate that. $188 total including $32 oil
change I had asked for.

What he did was is cut off the head of the bolt, in that constricted
area where I had been trying to get a wrench on. I thought he would
use a torch, but when I got the bolt back, there are many parallel lines
on it, from a saw. (I wonder if I could have sawn it off. I have a
Harbor Freight reciprocating saw, and could buy a better blade ) (The
replacement bolt was $34 by the way.)

Then he put the bolt through from the back, with the head now at the
rear, not the front as it had been, and the nut at the front.

When I asked the owner why they didn't put the bolt in from the rearn in
the first place, of course he didnt' know. (I think I once said
something about the nut being fixed in place. Maybe that was a
different nut. )

I knew there was another way to fix this, I just couldn't figure it out.

So he did it the way I said I'd try - if the spare tire well didn't
get in the way. Looks like you were lucky and it didn't

Yes you did.

By the time you suggested it, I was too tired to try it. And I was
thinking torch, not saw, and I forgot that I wanted an excuse to buy a
torch. I wonder if my Harbor Freight recip saw would have done it if
I'd bought a new blad. But you said in the same post that 200 was a
good price and I'm happy to be done.

Drove it 50 miles Sunday and it handles well, though since the steering
wheel is no longer straight, I'm sure I need an alignment, wh ich Toyota
is scheduled to do Wednesday.

Thanks.

And thanks all.