Swaybar bushing bolt broke...now what??

[selser420]

Today I started doing some front end work on the 2000 Windstar I just got from my mother in law with 157K on it. While replacing the swaybar bushings, the top bolt on the passenger side broke I see no way of drilling it out without major disassembly of the subframe....hell, there is barely enough room to get in there with wrenches! I have the new bushing on there currently, with a tiny c-clamp holding the top down and the bottom bolt tigtened down. I have to install some quick-struts in the morning before I can put it on the ground and see how it behaves.

Any suggestions on how to deal with this? I was thinking of welding the top part of the bracket down permanantly. The car has 157K on it and I don't plan on replacing these ever again. I called a wrench friend of mine and he suggested we weld a stud on and use a nut to hold it down. I figured I'd ask and see if there's any ideas I may be missing.

BTW....great site y'all have here! I'm already a bit of an automotive forum whore and I forsee many quality hours being wasted here.....especially now that I own a Ford! At least finding what's wrong with it is easy.........they circled it for me and colored it blue

[rhandwor]

You could try welding a thick washer to the stud through the hole. Then weld a nut to the washer. And try to remove the broken part of the bolt. If still hot it should come out. Then use a new grade 10.9 bolt.

[northern piper]

I assume that you've dropped the frame ~2 or so inches. I know that it's tight but I wonder if you could get a right angled drill in there to drill a hole and then use a screw extractor?

Piper

[selser420]

I didn't drop the frame but I was still able to get in there and remove the bractket/bushing. I doubt I could get anything in there drill wise even with it dropped a bit.

[northern piper]

I'd be looking at the procedure in the service manual. I don't have it here at work but IIRC it outlines dropping the 2 subframe bolts and easing that down about 2-3 inches. Once that's done the space is pretty open. I've done this twice now when I've replaced the sway bar bushings and it was pretty easy. I used bottle jacks to lower the frame slowly. If you can't find this procedure let me know and I'll look it up.

Piper