w210 sway bar mounts
 

Was replacing the front sway bar links yesterday, as they were rather noisy. Took the front bar off the car, pulled the old links off, pushed the new ones on, easy-peasy. Go to bolt the bar back onto the car, and one of the little mount bolts snaps off as I'm tightening it. :mad: It broke flush with the body. :mad::mad: So now the front sway bar is being held to the body with only 3 bolts instead of 4.

Took it for a drive, the knocking noises indicative of worn links is gone, nice and smooth sounding over small bumps. Took some faster turns and didn't hear any noises there either, so I think it's secure enough.

What would you do? Remove the sway bar again and try to drill out the broken bolt? Or just drive it? I'm leaning towards the latter.

It has 4 bolts for a reason, if 3 would suffice then they'd have used 3.

Yeah, I would second POD's sentiments and recommend you do what needs to be done to get the stub out and replace it. Those bolts are pretty beefy...how much torque were you putting on it to break it clean off?

You can probably get it out with an "easy out" and replace it without having to disassemble it again.

Lupin,

Those bolts were designed to work as a team. With one missing, the way they're arranged puts more than twice the load on the remaining bolt. I'm sure it's flexing every time you take a corner and after a while, you'll end of with two snapped bolts instead of just one.

Actually, I thought just the opposite - they looked rather wimpy to me; they're not big bolts, I think they're M8 size. I wasn't using a cheater bar or anything to tighten them. I did use the impact to remove them, maybe that weakened it?

Next weekend I'll put it up on the ramps and see if I can extract the broken bolt.

I'll admit it has been about 2 years since I touched mine so you're probably right. Did you do the bushings too or just the end links? I did my bushings because they were creaking and had shrunk.

I think what he broke was one of the 4 bolts attaching the bushing bracket, not the single bolt attaching the sway bar link.

Just the end links. No noise from the bushings and didn't notice any cracks, so left them alone.

Correct. The single bolt for the end link is very beefy indeed, it'd be a real challenge to break that one! :o

Yep....I snapped my torx bit trying to get that one loose.

If you do have to remove the sway bar to get he broken bolt out, I'd sure consider replacing the bushings too if they are original. At this age, they probably don't have much life left.

If you do I, mine came with new and improved bolts. I messed up one of those replacing mine also.