300zx Rear Lower Right control arm SNAPPED!!

My Rear lower control arm snapped coming out of a servo today, I heard a big clunk noise, then started to drive and instantly the steering was all over the place, I had to find a place to pull over and get the car towed back home.
I'm glad this didn't happen at highway speeds otherwise this would have been a recipe for disaster.
There is no rim or wheel damage, inb4 people accuse me of hitting a gutter lol, also have shitty dash cam footage of it happening lol

 

Aftermarket or OEM?

 

Talk about lucky! Even if that'd happened going 60 or 70 you probably would have wrecked your Z. Hasn't there been a few control arms just snap for no apparent reason now? Perhaps there ought to be a general warning put out to Z drivers and a group buy for safety related items that every Z should have replaced now that most are 25yrs old?

 

So that was you on the side of the road, I passed you on the way back to Nerang,

 

Wow, that is concerning.

Is your car lowered or anything? Any suspension mods on the rear?

When you get it on stands, can you get a better photo, also have a look see if maybe the bushes were rooted which was allowing play in the arm. ie look for a possible reason.

 

Yeah its a oem arm
Never want to experience that again, i might look into some aftermarket lower control arms. You can see that it snapped at the oem weld.
I just borrowed the commodore, and picked up a replacement arm from NizzPro at southport.
The car is a fair bit lower than standard, i have rear upper control arms at the back.
I'll take a few photos when i get home and upload them tonight when i replace this bugger
Ahhh so thats who went past me haha, i was expecting you to turn around help out a fellow zedder haha

 

lol, that's gotta be worth a one month ban eh

 

Geez mate, glad you're alright and it happened somewhere that didn't put you or your Z at risk!

 

You wouldnt have recognised me. I wasnt in a zed

But in all seriousness. That is an odd place to it to fail. Im wondering if corrosion had set in and weakened it. Keen to see the photos.

 

So we just need a 3 finger wave that won't be mistaken for a 2 finger FU while driving past :driving: if you can't stop.

 

haha ok ok, it was a black 300zx with mismatched panels. I don't know who it was then

 

Bushings look fine to me
GCSSB was the last to look over the car and did an alignment just over a month ago, surprised they didn't see anything while they we're there.

 

wow that looks like it may have rusted through

I had my hicas lockout bar come off at 110 on the hume. That was interesting

 

On lowered 300ZX TT with stiff shocks and springs, I have heard of the front upper OEM arms welds cracking. Every time I remove the front and rear wheels I check the welds for cracks. With the adjustable front arms I am using they have always check out OK.

 

That looks like it's been cracked for a while going by the surface rust along the crack leading up to the clean break. You are very lucky it broke when it did. That could have been very nasty indeed. I'm surprised it wasn't picked up by the mechanic.

Cheers

 

Yep - the rust line is a sure sign that failure was inevitable sooner or later

Lucky man - could have been a disaster at high speed.

 

To much heat applied to remove the factory bushes removing strength from the metal & removing the paint allowing it to start to rust as well.

You can see from the way part of the surface where the steel seperated is rusty that this part cracked but did not completely fail at an earlier point - possibly while the bushes were being replaced.

A bit of a worry that's for sure!!!

 

That would make alot of sense, I've only had the car since the beginning of the year. Not sure if it was Danai or BlueZ that changed them, i'm just glad nothing happened
Just had the car aligned today to make sure everything was okay, and it all came up sweet.
Just wanted to share this post with everyone so they are aware of the possibility of this happening