I went to swap the A-arm and spindle last night and it appears i damaged the threads for the A-arm mounting bolts.
I'm talking about the 2 Large 19mm bolts , they are the rearmost bolts for mounting an A-arm, the bolt on the far outer edge of the car will go about 3 turns and then won't budge. I don't want to damage it further as i'm sure there will be more A-arm swaps in the future.
obviously i'm wondering how to fix it .
Do I just run a tap to repair the threads?
Also I'm wondering if my process of A-arm removal caused the issue. I was lazy and decided to remove the A-arm while attatched to the spindle. I removed the axle nut, brake caliper , swap bar , Then the outer rear A-arm bolt with a rattle gun. the A-arm moved down as i removed it so maybe there was some unwanted foces at work ? i then removed the A-arm from the subframe. removed the inner rear A-arm bolt. then i unbolted the spindle from the coilover and pulled it all out.
for re-install I attatched the A-arm to the subframe. I put the rear outer A-arm bolt in a few turns, but then took it out as i realized it was just making the subrame bolt harder to line up. i then attatched the swaybar because it was lined up perfectly. moved over to the rear A-arm bolts and the outer one won't go in. I put the Inner one in about 95% in. it has a few turns left to go.
Was it my methodology that caused this problem? I've done a few A-arm swaps (and removed a bunch at the pick n pull) I ran into a similar issue on my STI when i was doing an A-arm swap , it was caused by doing the bolts in the wrong order/ fighting with it too much.
Oh and the rear bushing is completely destroyed and i think nut with a large shoulder has been backing off on that A-arm. what's left of the bushing was allowing a crazy amount of movement.