88Stick350

While spending some "quality" time underneath my '83 'Bird completing the installation of the Auto Meter gauges I bought (a year ago), I noticed something alarming.

I was laying behind the driver's side front tire when I notice a shadow underneath the head of the chassis bolt behind the rear mounting point of the A arm. To my surprise it was finger-loose and had backed out ~2-3 turns. The same bolt on the passenger's side was also in about this same condition.

Now my chassis has just over 215K on it BUT the car has spent its entire life in West Tennessee which has some of the smoothest roads I've ever seen; NOTHING like northern roads and being a CT "Yankee", I KNOW. When I completely rebuilt/upgraded the car's suspension (former "Iron Duke" car) after I bought with 192K, I don't recall these two bolts being in this condition; I believed I went over all of them after having removed so many.

This also created a sound nearly every time I braked but not necessarily when I went over bumps. Though to be honest my car rides very firm and with all of the typical third gen. cacophony of sounds, it probably just blended into the background noise.

As I recall there are only six main bolts retaining the engine crossmember/front suspension to the unibody so a loss of two of them would be significant.

[This message has been edited by 88Stick350 (edited May 07, 2001).]