i did a search, but couldnt find the correct answer to help me.

about 5 days ago when i changed the axle in my 99 sicoupe. front pass. side, everything went well...until the end when i had to put the castle nut on to bolt the spindle to lower control arm... it tightened pretty well...torqued down to specs to what...40-43lbf-ft. right as the torque wrench was about to click, i could feel it, it spun. so i heard no click.
like it was stripped. but the nut itself wasn't stripped because when i would lightly try to turn it to tighten...the nut and bolt would turn.

then thought to myself...ill just check that out this weekend when i replace the studs on the hub also.
So then i just stuck the cotter pin in and thought oh it'll hold fine.

just tonight, 6-7pm. i was on the way to a friends house who lives about half n hour away. doing a constant 80 the whole way, 2 exits away and it just goes bluppee! bluuablaublauuaua....pulled to the side. got out to look at it. (front pass. side)

the lower control arm was sittin on the rim. when pulling to the side...i guess it had sheered a thin layer of the rim all around. not too worried about the rim though.

at this point it wouldnt roll, so we had to fix it on the side of the freeway. which was the worst thing we've ever experienced ever, cuz you get so paranoid of a car just rammin into ya but luckly for us there wasn't too much traffic and we were way off to the side. and he brought some cones hhaha
so we took the axle out and repaired the inboard joint cuz when the tire was lookin like this // from the front view, it pulled it apart(inboard joint). put everything back with new castle nut and cotter pin (still spun like i mentioned before) pulled up about 2-3 feet and bam! its out again..broke off the castle nut and cotter pin!!! =[ so the bolt where the castle nut and cotter pin is stripped to death now...what caused it to pop out like that again???
im thinkin it could be a bent lower control arm? havent looked it again yet...got it towed to his house around 9 and called my car a night. we're gonna take a look at it tomorrow and hopefully find out whats wrong.

but in the meantime...i just wanted to know what you guys thought would be the source of this problem...why it popped out again. THANKS! for readin, any help or comments appreciated.


Modified by ADVANcrx at 1:06 PM 5/22/2004

 

sounds to me that you stripped the bolt, allowing the nut to have some play which then wore the rest of the threads down on the bolt and the nut popped off. Just putting a new nut on wouldn't really fix anything. The cotter pin is there to prevent the castle nut from spinning off, but it won't help if from falling off especially under the cars weight.