Bilstein shocks came undone while driving.

[vince24L]

I have a problem hopefully someone can give me some advice on here..

A few days I was driving and all of a sudden I hear metal on metal under my car when I'd hit a bump. I had the girlfriend stand outside of my car as I hit a bump to see where it was coming from. It turned out my rear driver side wheel was bottoming out on every bump and the metal on metal sound was my Bilstein PSS shock wasn't connected and the bolt and the shock itself was smacking off the control arm. Well today I realised its messed up pretty good. The bolt was stripped to all hell so I figured no biggie I'll go buy another bolt and everything will be fine. Nope. The control arm is completely stripped out. Is there anything I can be other than buying a new one? It maybe be stripped too bad to try 'tap n' die' on it.

would this even really be considered the control arm?

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y35/vince31324/tn.jpg
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y35/vince31324/DSCF1259.jpg

[Theodore]

Try a helicoil, that should save some of the hole volume. I'm not 100% sure what I'm looking at on the CA though

[pioneer416]

Drill out, tap and helicoil so that the correct bolt will fit in there... GL

EDIT: If you do end up doing the above, make sure you get a bottoming tap, to finish tapping, or you could just grind the tip off if you don't care about the tap

[Vonbimmer]

Helicoil sounds like it would work. I'd also check around, you may be able to score a rear trailing arm from a wrecker pretty cheap and then you have a good excuse to do the ball joints. (On my 95's they are toast.)

[Mpowered02]

Looks like someone either over torqued that lower bolt or left it loose allowing it to work it's way out and take the threads with it. I doubt that re-tapping that hole will help, but a heli-coil or time-sert might work. I'd start there and if that doesn't hold then it's time to start shopping for a new (used) rear trailing arm as that ear for the shock is part of the whole rear trailing arm...

[vince24L]

only thing is if I try to helicoil it. It will make me have to use a larger sized bolt. Then the bolt wouldnt fit through my shock hole. correct?

[Eric98Sedan]

No, that's the whole point of a heli-coil.... to retain the original sized bolt.

[Nitrous115]

Keep us updated I'm interested to see how this works. One of my lower shock mounting points is stripped pretty badly and im considering doing a retap.

[foler]

I have exactly same problem. Solution is 1$:).

http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1158340

[bmwpowere36m3]

^ This failure isn't related to the washer-issue. Here the threads get damaged from over-torquing and fatigue over time. The other just causes the shock eyelet to pop off. The first fix is more than $1, you need to heli-coil or time-sert the damaged threads.

[ZUUD BYE]

Get one from the parting out guys and do balljoint upper & lowers

[libravcs]

is this more often a Bilstein shock issue? I havent heard of this with stock shocks

[Stück]

is this more often a Bilstein shock issue? I havent heard of this with stock shocksIts a improper bolt installation issue.

Damn...

[shaeff]

^ This failure isn't related to the washer-issue. Here the threads get damaged from over-torquing and fatigue over time. The other just causes the shock eyelet to pop off. The first fix is more than $1, you need to heli-coil or time-sert the damaged threads.

time-sert > heli-coil. :)

Time-serts are excellent!

[RRSperry]

Yep, install issue... Locktite and torque = no problems.