A hole in my rear trailing arm!!!

[DieselHead]

I recently jacked up the rear of my car to replace the rear brake pads, and as I was poking around back there, I noticed that a hold had formed on the underside of my rear trailing arm around where the shock sticks through. The hole has eaten a little of the underside, but hasn't reached the top side yet. Seems to me that this is a pretty critical part that bears a lot of stress. I noticed that it's $800 through Performance Products and there's no way I could afford that. Is there something I could spray on the metal down there to slow down the rust and the enlargement of the hole? If not, if I could get my hands on a used trailing arm, is it hard to install? Seems like a pain in the ass. I have no rust anywhere, except for this rear end part. Frustrating

Alex

[Chris Blanchard]

I've got "eaten away" areas on both of my rear trailing arms as well. I picked up a couple of used ones at Atlanta-Stuttgart Auto Parts (aka ASAP) for about $300 for the pair. They are north of Atlanta about 30 miles or so.

It's going to be a job to replace them, but I've read the procedure in the manual and I am convinced I can do it in a weekend.

ASAP has a website located at http://www.atlanta-stuttgart.com

Great folks there, they only dismantle MB there and are very knowledgeable and friendly too.

They were asking about $35 apiece to ship them to me in Cincinnati, but I managed to pick them up in person when I drove down to Atlanta for a business meeting.

Chris Blanchard
1984 300SD 145k (awaiting replacement of the rear trailing arms)

[JimSmith]

Chris,

I had that happen to my 1982 240D and found a salvage guy who was recommended here in Connecticut to replace the rotten one (driver's side) with one from his boneyard. The job was about $250 and I thought that was reasonable. Been in there 3 years and still seems ok. He did mess up the emergency brake tension and I had to adjust that, but otherwise not a problem, even with the alignment. Jim