Yesterday I replaced my front sway bar end links on my 2013 R60 S. I bought sway bar bushings for the rear, and since the end links went on so smoothly and quickly, I knew I had plenty of time to get those simple rear bushings replaced before it started to rain in a couple hours.

My arrogance angered the car gods.

I started with the passenger side. those 13mm bolts (8mm shank) were not cooperating, but 16th turn by 16/th turn they were coming. After several minutes I got the rear bolt out. The front was tighter. Rather than re-applying PB Blaster and or applying heat, I took the lazy route and put a cheater on it.

Don't do that. The lazy man works the hardest.

As 100% of you would have predicted, I sheared that front bolt clean in half right as the clouds started rolling in. I forgot to mention--I don't have a garage.

I expect the correct thing to do would have been to drop the rear sub-frame and extract that sheared bolt. I immediately decided not to do the correct thing. After considering my options for a bit, I decided that if I moved the top control arm out of my way, I had just enough room to get in there with a 4" grinder cut-off wheel to cut out the sub-frame welded bracket nut, enabling me to through-bolt the bracket, without destroying the sub-frame. Please keep in mind that I have years of steel work experience (albeit, years ago) and do NOT recommend doing this if you aren't extremely experienced with confined space grinding).

I was able to get a bit more than 3/4 it cut out, but was starting to make contact with the sub-frame. I needed another way to grind the rest of the threaded section of that nut. I ran (skate boarded) the quarter mile to my local hardware store, and thankfully they sell Dremel tools and accessories. $127 later I had a new tool, some extra grinding bits of various shapes, and 8mm coarse thread bolts and shoulder nuts. I was able to get in there and grind the nut down to a clean flat surface, but the bolt was still stuck.

One of my metal punches has a long section of 10mm hex, so I put the punch in 3/8 drive 10mm deep socket with a long extension, centered it on the bolt, and gave it a couple of good whacks. It popped right out. I used the small conical grinding bits ( it took 2 of them) to clean the hole to the point that the new bolt would slide through. I applied blue Locktite to the threads, and bolted it all back together.

I beat the rain by about 15 minutes, and it seems to be a decent (if not proper) repair.

The moral of the story is don't use a cheater on these small bolts!

I'll post pics next week when I replace the driver side bushings.

 

That’s brutal! Hey at least you made it! I just did some suspension work on my 2012 All4 S and given the amount of corroded hardware, I am AMAZED nothing broke. I wasn’t racing a rain storm, but it is my daily driver so I had to beg my wife to shuttle my *** to work for a week while I waited for parts. 😕

 

It was definitely satisfying to make it just in time. But I wasn't just racing against the rain: I was also racing against domestic turbulence! This is the family car (and the only car), so if I had to leave it on jack stands until the following day, I would have had days of hearing about all of the real AND hypothetical things we weren't able to do on Sunday; and how embarrassing it was to have our car on blocks in front of the house all weekend; and how car repairs always take longer than I think they're going to take, which is absolutely true, but still...