2nd time the bolts sheered off

this is the 2nd time the bolts from my lower control arm to wheel assembly/ lower ball joint have sheered off in the last 4 month. first time i was in the sand so i could see maybe somthing happening. fixed it replaced the bolts with some that were supposed to be really strong grade 8 bolts.


happy it was in the sand and not 20 min later on the way home on the highway

last night driving home at 2am, back street, smooth pavement, doing 10mph BAM passenger side drops into the pavement. EXACT SAME THING. luckily i didnt replace the fender from the last time it happened so i just wrecked a already wrecked fender. people were saying loose bolts or hitting the trails to hard. havnt been in the bush a whole lot since last time it happened and i just checked all the bolts last week when i changed my rotors.




i had a alignment done about a month ago. steering wheel was centred perfectly. last night before this happenedi noticed my steering wheel was at almost 9pm going straight. huge red flag, figured id check in the morning. didnt make it home to check.

if any mechanics can give me any insight into why it has happened twice to the passenger side??

 

only theory i can think of is maybe my rack and pinion is fucked and the passenger tire is slightly turning right while my left tire stays straight. causing pressure on the bolts and all of them just ripping away

 

Well you are probably on the right place to hopefully shed some light on the situation.

 

Are you lifted ?
hard to tell by the pics

 

Maybe your LBJ bolts loosened up a bit? If you get any slop in there, an impact can shear them off...

 

the first time it happened i was stock in the front. now i have billy 5100 set to the middle setting

 

Can't tell from the picture is it shearing the stud off the ball joint or just the bolts holding it to the control arm? If it's the bolts on the control arm it should have done damage to the control arm it's a lot softer than the bolts. The shear force of the bolt is probably close to 30,000# so they must have been lose.

 

Looks like the ball joint itself broke away in the 'on pavement' incident. What brand joint did you replace the original with?

 

The first time it happened i didnt replace the ball joint. There was no damage to it. Only the bolts and cv axle. It was just the 4 bolts that sheered away. Pretty sure ill need a new ball joint this time because the ball joint stud did alot of damage to the pavement haha.

 

Are you the original owner? Do you know for sure if before the 1st failure, the original factory installed 4 LBJ bolts have ever been disturbed, for any reason?

 

I am the 3rd owner. I have no clue if the anything happened with the first owner. Defiently didnt happened with the 2nd owner cuz he put like 50km on it and owned it for 2 weeks before toyota told him you cant tow them

 

If the bolts going into the knuckle we're loose for any amount of time, the threads will definitely be donezo

 

Before anything else, be aware that metric grade 8 is more or less a standard or general purpose bolt and not up to the job for LBJ fasteners.

I asked the questions in my initial reply because in monitoring Tacoma forums since Tacoma day one, I have never heard of a LBJ bolt failure with respect to the original factory build. This means that (IMO) all 1st gen LBJ bolt failures are a result of an installer falling short of the correct required process to one degree or another or a poor quality replacement joint. Racing/jumping is not part of this discussion.

Outside of poor quality aftermarket parts (frankly all but OEM), not observing all the following points for an install can result in the bolts loosening followed by shearing and catastrophic failure.
The somewhat flawed design by Toyota of having the 4 mount bolts in a constant state of tension dictates that every degree of TLC must be applied.

In no particular order.

#1 Use thread locker.
#2 Use the thread locker properly. Things must be CLEAN. One pinhead sized crumb of greasy crud in the bolt hole can negate the effectiveness of the thread locker. Old thread locker debris left in the bolt holes can "wipe" away the fresh stuff as the bolts are installed.
#3 Correct torque, 59 ft lbs, correctly applied to NEW bolts.
#4 clean and inspect the mounting surfaces for burrs or nicks, clean with solvent. OEM replacement joints come with a coating of rust preventative that must be removed.
#5 Dry fit the joint and check for any rocking and proper fit of the single alignment sleeve, the little collar around one of the bolt bores.

Properly installed these bolts will not "just loosen".

 

ok so thread locker is always good. so if bolts started falling out on my drive home would that be why my alignment suddenly went to shit 10 minutes before it failed??

 

oh im very sure ill need a new one. probably no threads left.

 

if it was me I would just take a hit and uprage the lower control arms to camburgs or total chaos's... that shit wont ever happen again. That's a strange issue because ive never had that problem on my tacoma.

 

F911 bolts, fuck yeah