Malibu: mysterious clunk

[kevm14]

Another picture taken from behind the wheel instead of in front. Much more clear as to how it cracked.

I'm still not sure rust had anything to do with this.

[kevm14]

Napa says there is an 18mm, 22mm and 24mm front bar for this car. I put a micrometer on it and I get 22mm. The yard I ordered the bar from said they're all the same. As if that isn't pro enough, they said they would call when it was pulled (I already paid) and this morning I heard nothing, and called 3 times to no answer. I finally just drove over and they were actually closed. Someone was in the yard doing inventory but the gate was closed. Thanks guys. In other news, West Warwick seems like a bit of a dump.

I should probably pick up two 22mm bushings because it looks a little annoying to replace later.

[Adam]

West Warwick is a dump.

[kevm14]

New bar.

Donor car was a 2001 Olds Alero w/ 108k. So, slightly newer and slightly lower miles.

The guy at the yard was cool. Looked like a young guy and an older guy. I guess they just aren't good at phone customer service.

I walk in and say I called about a Malibu anti-roll bar. He goes "Kevin?"

I said, "yeah, am I infamous?" thinking maybe they were annoyed by my multiple phone calls. He said, uh, no, are you? Haha. Anyway, he met me around front with the bar.

I measured it at the center and it was way bigger. Then I measured it where I did previously and it matched. Yay.

Then he gestures to the Maxima's muffler and goes "you drive that around like that?" Perhaps the car/muffler didn't match my appearance with khaki pants and tucked in button down shirt. I laugh and explain I drove it in high school. My answer didn't seem to have any real plausibility, based on his reaction. I volunteered that I'm not as old as I look. A couple exchanges later he goes, "what are you, 42?" No way. Ha, always hilarious.

Turns out he also hadn't run my card yet, so I had to go back inside after putting the bar in the Maxima's trunk. So my horror story turned out just fine. They seem like good people. No B-bodies though.

While I was inside, a couple of guys came in and asked if they had any dump trucks. Turns out he wanted parts for a big Ford dump truck. The guy was like "F-350? F-450?" Nope. Try F-800. Like this:

They didn't have anything this large...

I even had time to stop at Napa to pick up my new 22mm bushings ($15-ish). The bar did come with bushings and the brackets just in case.

[kevm14]

This doesn't sound so bad. I assume a Grand Am is the same as the Malibu.

http://www.grandamgt.com/forum/showthread.php?t=14989

But I'll check my manual to see if there's any difference in GM's directions.

[kevm14]

The Grand Am directions in my FSM are the same as the Malibu. I did also take a second look at the subframe directions and the design doesn't quite match the illustration. Plus they missed 4 rear bolts to remove when describing how to drop the rear part of the subframe. Onto the job.

After jacking it up and pulling the wheels I got a nice shot of the failure.

I removed the nut and upper bushings of the end links.
Next, I removed the driver's side anti-roll bar bushing retaining bracket bolt, and bent the bracket up out of the way. 15mm bolt.

On the passenger side, there is a loop of power steering line which functions as the power steering cooler. That has to move out of the way. There is a 10mm bolt at the rear and a 10mm nut at the front. The front retainer actually rides on the passenger side anti-roll bar bushing bracket, which is a studded bolt on this side only.

The bar is ready to come out! Just kidding, not even close.

Another bar closeup on the failed end.

After fighting with it for a while, I considered dropping the subframe. But instead of following the directions, I looked closer at the things in the way. First, if I dropped the subframe, the clearance issue with the steering rack wouldn't change. I could move that. But decided not to. To begin, I first addressed the obstacle issue by disconnecting the tie-rods from the knuckles. It ended up turning the ball joint so I used an 8mm socket and an open end wrench to get the nuts off. The tapered joint just came apart, so that was easy. The nuts are 18mm I think.

After that, I still had issues. The bar wanted to wedge itself right under the strut, above the CV joint boot. Would have been helpful to do this with another person to eye up everything that's happening, instead of walking back and forth a bunch of times (and under). So, time to disconnect the strut from the knuckle to move the knuckle out of the way. I ended up doing both sides since it was easy enough. 21mm nuts and the bolts are knurled so you don't need to back them up. They don't have a hex end anyway so you'd have to use an adjustable wrench.

15 minutes later, the bar was out. I did end up fully removing the bushings and retaining brackets since they were clearly in the way.

Making sure I had the right orientation.

I examined the new bar and on the driver's side (where the original one broke), it is just starting to show signs of impending failure. The other side was fine. But I think I should try to grind this a bit and weld it on the car (I don't feel like pulling the bar again).

After wrestling the new bar in place. This was tedious by myself as I kept having to check all over the place for clearance issues. I ended up figuring out a way to shove it back in, getting through each successive obstacle (to include the subframe, steering rack and brackets on both ends and exhaust).

It was all going fine. I reattached the passenger side bracket and studded bolt. It's tough to get to that bolt. I ended up reaching through with a deep socket on a ratchet. Pro tip: if you need a length other than your smallest extension, try combining shorter adapters. For example, a while back I picked up adapters to convert up or down. So a 1/4" to 3/8" and a 3/8" to 1/4" is shorter than my 3" extension. I couldn't seem to start the driver's side bolt for the bracket. It would fight me and I didn't want to ruin the welded nut inside the subframe. I tried running a tap down there but same issue. No room to do anything so the tap wasn't going in right, either. After enough tries (plus air shots) I said, screw it. I drilled a 1/2" hole under the nut (took several tries to line it up) and ran the tap through the nut from underneath. This turned out to be rather brilliant.

Everything reassembled except the end links. I waited to do them on the ground so everything would be level. Torque the lower strut nuts to 133 lb-ft. Don't need a backup wrench as the bolts are knurled. The tie-rod nut called for 15 lb-ft + 180° (prevailing torque) but I opted for "tight." I also knocked the rust off the rotors at the edges and the outside circumference. The rust was rubbing on the pad shims causing it to sound nasty. My 4" grinder came in handy. I just started the car and put it in 1st gear to get everything to rotate for me. I did also use white lithium spray to lube the bushings. I did the same thing when I replaced these bushings on my CTS-V. It should help them live a bit longer, maybe.

End links done. I was able to reuse them because I had replaced them once before so they came apart fine. These are B-body style (double cushion). Less sophisticated than a ball joint end link since there's more bind but I think they're more durable.

More gratuitous shots of the old bar. You can see the passenger side was getting pretty close to failing also.

So how does it drive? It's so much better now. No more brake squeal and, more importantly, the creaking/clunking is all gone. It feels like a whole car again. The result was satisfying though the job wasn't that exciting.