Have an interesting and unfortunate problem i'd like the help of you folks on. My 91 rs is made mostly of rust these days and the mount for the torque arm totally collapsed. Fell of completely due to rot. I put a pic to show exactly what fell of, and will take a pic of my vehicle as soon as possible. My question is how would i be able to fix this? There is very little good metal left underneath the car that i would be able to weld to. I'll have a pic of mine shortly but just wanted to consider my options. thanks

 

That looks like the Lower Control Arm mount to me....

 

you are correct sir
i am an idiot

 

THink about it...

That's one of the thicker parts of the car, being the suspension and all.

Do you suppose, that for all these years, the salt has been getting on just that one thing, and the whole rest of the car is untouched?

So if one of the thick parts has rotted and fallen off, what would you guess the thin parts are like?

If that part had got damaged by an accident or something, it might be repairable. However, that is not the case here. I'd be willing to bet that by the time you managed to cut out enough metal to fix that, there'd be nothing left anywhere near it to weld to. And then, when you finally did find enough car left somewhere to attach something to, then next week, the one on the other side will fall off... or your gas pedal foot will go through the holes there... or you'll find that it has rotted around the windshield and now that's coming out... and so on.

When a car gets THAT BAD, it's usually time to let it retire gracefully; and learn the hard-taught lesson, that you should WASH IT in an automatic car wash with the under-car spray feature REGULARLY during salt season.

I would say your options at this point are limited to other cars. Just be sure to preserve whatever is still good and has value off of that one before saying your final good-bye to it, so that others may live.

 

I gotta say having a LCA coming loose is not good at all. Definitely don't want to drive it like that. You might be able to save it by welding new metal in, but it just depends on how much rust has collected else where like stated. Doing floor pans looks bad enough without thinking about doing all the suspension points (panhard, lcas, transmission tunnel rails, spring pockets, etc) too.

 

pics please.

if that part just fell off, chances are the car is in questionable structural condition.