Some months back we had a long thread on Mustang II kit failures and I had expressed great confidence on the kits, if properly installed. Well, I had one this evening on my way home and will share it with those that may be interested. The 36 Ford 5WC in my Avatar was completed in 1999 and I have put 26,000 trouble free miles on it (til this evening) It has a Fatman's stage 3 kit in it. The 1/2 inch bolt that fastens the tublar lower control arm failed about 1/2 inch inside the cross member on the front side of the XMember and about 3 inches from the bolt head. the back side of the lower control arm remained attached to the cross member, but the front side of the arm went down and out. The wheel assembly tilted out at the top and this fractured the heavy MOPAR upper ball joint seat. The tire took the beautiful paint job to the shiney bare metal on about 10 inches of the wheel opening bead. I was slowing to make a right turn so was only doing about 15 mph and just touched the brake. I jacked the car tho get some relief for the fender and examine the damage. I pulled the bolt end from the control arm eye and saw that it had basically sheared. The bolt had been about 90% sheared for some time from the rust on it and the last 10% was a shiney new brake. The remaining part of the bolt appears to be frozen in the tube that is welded inside the cross member. Now the scarey part: I had driven the car yesterday about 200 miles thru the twisting mountain roads in Western North Carolina and many of these turns at speeds high enough to have a comfortable drift. Great fun, but could have been disasterous. I'll be having a conversation with the Fatman in the AM and see if there other failures such as this. These bolts are grade 5 and the fracture would be indicative of over torque, but since I installed and assembled the front end, I know it was not over torqued.
Trees
Trees