Rear driver side strut bent at thread portion of the strut

[gaseosx]

Has anyone seen this type of failure?

Bolt that attaches to rear trailing arm bent.



Coil over bent at the threads that the bushing head attaches to. This is much easier to see in person.





Should I be inspecting the rear trailing arm for damage too? At a cursory glance everything looks fine. As far as I'm aware I didn't hit anything or run into potholes.

[Phatty]

the bottom bolt of the shock? i dont see how that can happen if the bolt was in all the way, it would have to stretch the bolt's threads to be able to bend that bolt.

show us a picture, that seems like a hard thing to do, unless i am thinking of a different bolt.

[gaseosx]

Originally Posted by Phatty

the bottom bolt of the shock? i dont see how that can happen if the bolt was in all the way, it would have to stretch the bolt's threads to be able to bend that bolt.

show us a picture, that seems like a hard thing to do, unless i am thinking of a different bolt.

Looks like my original links to the pics broke.

I didn’t even realize this was bent until I was unmounting the shock from the trailing arm to check what was squeaking.

[Phatty]

fwiw, my bolt that attaches the bottom of the shock to the knuckle is flange bolts, yours looks like some non oem bolt. if both the bottom bolt and the shock rod is bent, there must have been some good force applied to the suspension like sliding into a curb.

[gaseosx]

Originally Posted by Phatty

fwiw, my bolt that attaches the bottom of the shock to the knuckle is flange bolts, yours looks like some non oem bolt. if both the bottom bolt and the shock rod is bent, there must have been some good force applied to the suspension like sliding into a curb.

That’s the weird part, no major hits whatsoever. I haven’t even abused the car yet. I do remember that it was harder to install that bolt on that side, but I would have noticed if it was bent.

[gaseosx]

Ended up replacing driver side strut, passenger side had no damage. Also upgraded to heim joins instead of rubber bushings. Hard for me to tell if there was any NVH increase.

Didn't like how the OEM bolt didn't have a flange and the heim joint measured 1mm thicker so I used ARP Flange bolts (664-1008) instead. I don't know if this is a good idea as it could potentially cause failure at the trailing arm knuckle instead of the bolt/strut.