Well, when your car has over 200,000 miles stuff is going to happen once in a while!

I pulled into my driveway and when I stepped out my foot hit something hard. It turned out to be the head of a very large bolt! My first thought was it looked really important, like the bolt at the end of the crankshaft! Well, I looked under the hood and was very happy everything looked good there. Then I got under the car and immediately saw where it was from, the left trailing link to the left, rear knuckle bolt! The rest of the bolt was securely in place (held by rust) still holding the link to the knuckle. Well, I looked up the bolt online, found out it was a Metric flange head 16mm (dia) X 2 (thread pitch) X 80mm long. Believe it or not my local Ace hardware had these in stock ($7.50!). Grade 10.9 steel.

I think this is a fluke failure, it looks like there was a small defect in the bolt from when it was made and it broke by metal fatigue. Took 15 years! I was very lucky it broke off in my driveway! You guys seen anything like this?

Andy
99 Monte Z34