So last night I was driving in the Pao, still gleeful from finally getting it back after over a year out of service due to hitting that deer, when I drove over some railroad tracks, felt a horrible jolt, then stopped moving. Getting out, things looked like what you see above: a wheel in very much the wrong place. What the hell happened?
Rolling underneath, I saw that the control arm that the mechanic replaced – a mechanic that specializes in JDM cars, I should note – seems to have come off, somehow. This shouldn’t happen. David thinks perhaps a locking ring was forgotten, or something like that. I’m just happy I was going so slow when it happened, because if that control arm decided to stop, you know, controlling while I was on a highway or even going, say, 40 mph or so in traffic, things could have gone way, way worse.
I do like how the lights formed those stripes in that picture up there, though. I don’t like how the oil pan seems to have cracked when it smacked the ground as the control arm fell off, though.
I have to say my confidence in this mechanic is severely eroded. First I found an old, cracked hose on the brand-new radiator that was causing a coolant leak, and now my wheel pretty much fell off. I’m gonna have to have a stern conversation here today, and I am not a fan of those. Oy.
Jeesus, that looked like you suddenly got a Honda E turning circle on a Pike car for free! 🙂
My Figaro has a horrible turning radius. Yes even worse than my big old Citroën CX (also transverse engine front wheel drive nose heavy), so I guess it’s the same with the Pao?
Glad you were able to stop and didn’t get hurt. As much as you love that silly car, I kind of feel bad for you.
Closing in on 5 years here with the Figaro, without anything ever going wrong, besides me scraping the rear right fender on some walls a couple of times.. Even just the right spec oil filter for it for 2$ and new brake pads for it for 6$. Love japanese cars with cheap service parts!
Pao-MIA (Mechanical Ineptitude Allowed)
You are never forgotten.
With something that egregious I would not give them a second chance. Make them fix it and never use them again. I do most of my own work on my cars but years ago was in a hurry to get a car safetied as my wife wanted to drive it to meet a cousin in Michigan. Garage that had done a few jobs for me in the past replaced the rear calipers and did the safety. My wife called me at work saying that as she had driven the car home (about 10 blocks), the brake pedal had gone to the floor and that there were two lines of fluid on the street leading to our driveway. Got home and checked it and found both bleeder screws on the rear calipers were not even finger tight. Rear of master cylinder was empty. Called them up (Friday evening) and told them the car had to be fixed by noon Saturday. They argued (not normally open on Saturday) but eventually agreed. I watched them do the work, double checked it and tested the brakes before driving home. Never used them again.
That you apparently cleared the tracks doesn’t change the fact that crossing them caused a failure which stopped your car cold, a slightly different set of circumstances and it seems you could have been stopped on the tracks. I would definitely include that bit of information in your discussion with the shop. Did any trains pass through while you were waiting to be towed? It seems to me that this could have been a very different post in that situation.
I’m with MrJim. The picture doesn’t show the steering knuckle so it’s just speculation what happened. I assume the ball joint is still attached to the knuckle. It appears that the lower control arm is new, so the ball joint is usually pre-installed by the factory. If that’s the case it’s a defective part not mechanic error.
hey man, if Tracy was a REAL friend, he’d be wrenching on your shitboxes.
Oh, great! Now all of Torch’s fleet is going to be rusted to the core too.
I would give the shop a chance to fix their deficient work and the damage it caused. Maybe some new or ignorant mechanic gets lashed with an air hose while stretched over a stack of tires and you get to witness it. Maybe the shop owner takes responsibility and makes good on the repairs. Maybe the shop owner weasels. With the info rootwyrm and others have pointed out with the Jan 23rd photo of the control arm, you could just have the post with the photo in a browser tab on your phone, and today’s post on another. Use that as your leverage if there is weaseling. Just casually pull up the post saying you have a pic of the control arm right after you got your Pao back and scroll down while they watch. In addition, the Jan 23rd post is a written record of the radiator hoses and other issues you noticed immediately after you got your Pao back.
Don’t blow your stack at the shop, since that often immediately leads to an ended conversation and nobody gets what they want. Hopefully the shop makes you whole, and gives the owner a kick in the ass to ensure all work is done to spec after they realize they narrowly missed getting hit by a bad PR artillery round.
Your car is trying to suicide itself.
Where is the ball joint? Without knowing this everyone here is talking ex-rectum, including
If the locking circlip fell off the ball joint would still be captured by the lower flange of the joint and the steering knuckle.
If the nut came loose and was driven far enough to come off and smack the ball joint out of the arm I would expect more damage, and this would not be a sudden failure
If the ball joint is still connected to the steering knuckle the bottom flange of the joint must have failed, allowing it to pull through the arm – which probably isn’t the mechanics fault.
Need more information.
The best hypothesis I’m seeing here is that the nut backed off over time, then the taper in the knuckle came loose, then the excessive movement and forces in the suspension caused the ball joint to work itself loose in the control arm.
When the nut finally decided to exit, the loose ball joint dropped out.
What sound did it make when it broke? I’m assuming it went… “Poa”
I always preface these thing with “it varies from shop to shop,” but giving them a chance to correct the work before going nuclear is a good direction to try. When we have something like that happen we always want to see it ASAP, work it into the schedule as fast as possible and want to see if something wasn’t done right or if we got a bad part. If the shop has a good reputation they will likely take this path. Repairs to the repair should be covered under any warranty stated on the paperwork. I sincerely hope there is a written warranty on the paperwork.
@Jason Noiles I’m glad you’re okay! Many of us enthusiast weirdos keep our vehicles on the road at least partly by having an established relationship with a shop. And relationships are sometimes hard. I’d love to read a follow-up article about the difficult discussion you’re about to have. Perhaps a blow-by-blow about how you reached a resolution. Or perhaps a how-to guide for how to have difficult discussions such as this with your mechanic. This’d also be great to team-write with @Andrea.
I have a decent shop set up so I do all of my own repairs now, except on that black box called an automatic transmission.
I acquired a 2004 Chevy Impala police car and noticed there were 2 outstanding recalls, ignition switch and leaky valve cover gaskets (which can lead to… fiery death!) I knew the local Chevy dealer was crap but I let them do it anyway. That whole day was a shitshow and I didn’t think to look over the car until I got it back home. Popped the hood and the engine cover was missing. And one of the upper engine mounts (3.8L) was installed upside down so that it was like a cup waiting to collect debris and water and rot out. I had a part cars so I grabbed that engine cover and I flipped over the engine mount. Won’t even go back there for parts…
I had a mechanic not tighten the wheel lug bolts on my GFs car after a brake job. He flat out denied it. Luckily, I happened to notice a stray lug bolt in my driveway before anything bad happened.
I’ve experienced the exact same thing.
Yeah, the mechanic forgot the locking ring and so the ball joint just pulled out. I’m a little testy these days, but I’m going to call him a complete fucking idiot. Thank goodness for those train tracks!
Just seeing the photo I thought that the “JDM Expert” install you some of those longer drifting control arm for extreeeme steering.
That fiction nut is not real.
Were you able to establish proper containment of the oil spill and remediate the extensive environmental impact?
Personally, aside from the financial loss, I wouldn’t bother talking to the mechanic. He’s clearly incompetent or chemically impaired and I wouldn’t put Otto into any vehicle he’s touched. I would just leave him a scathing review so others may be warned.
Play the lotto and ask for sex. Your luck is in a weird state today, take advantage of it.
I guess your Pao was trying to dress up as Sir Vival for Purim.
I lost a balljoint and had only myself to blame- I overtightened the pinch bolt and cracked the thing, it popped off while I was turning a corner- slowly too luckily
I wonder if the JDM intern was working that day. The car should have had a final inspection by the mechanic staff before calling you to pick the Pao up. Sorry to see this Jason, I hope this gets resolved as it should and your Pao is back 100% soon.
In your Jan 23 post on the Pao, there is VERY CLEARLY a picture of the control arm without a castle nut or pin. The pic is even titled controlarm.jpg
That’s just bad wrenching. Sorry : [
Oh wow, that Jan 23 nut looks like it could be a zinc coated nut from your local Home Depot. What’s on the other side? hope it’s a grade 8 black oxide castle nut.
That’s a fiction nut so it’s OK and that’s not where it came apart. The entire ball joint pulled out of the lower control arm.
No, it absolutely is not OK.
Nissan specifies a castle nut and cotter pin. Anything else is wrong. End of discussion.
I think what you might be missing is that the joint you are describing could be intact; a separate joint (ball joint to control arm) could have failed. Based on the photo, it certainly seems to be that way
Look. If you already fucked up the castle nut and cotter pin, the rest of the failure mode is already irrelevant. Because you already made it unsafe.
But as I detailed elsewhere, no. The photo shows clear witness marks from a ridged press-fit ball joint, no damage to the control arm, and no pieces of the ball joint left in the control arm. There is absolutely no possible way for a properly installed control arm to experience this kind of failure without leaving carnage.
Even if the bottom fractured, it would have torn up the housing. It’s not torn up. Those are witness marks. Frankly, I’m goddamn TERRIFIED by how clear and high up those witness marks are. But that may be the lighting. (It looks like the housing is flared at the top. If so, witness marks should stop below the ridge. But again: may just be lighting.)
If the shaft fractured, which absolutely does happen even when the job is done right, there are parts of the ball joint in the control arm and on the knuckle. Also often a big grease mess. None of that here.
People need to understand: ball joints are designed with MULTIPLE layers of protection because of what they are and what happens when they fail. Very high press fit loads, locking nuts, locking rings, and flared bases are standard for a reason. I honestly cannot fathom any way that the failure mode could look like this short of screwing up so bad you defeated every single protection mechanism.
Eh, you sound very certain. My guess is that the mechanic used one of the shoddy aftermarket pieces and never touched the ball joint. Need more info. You can see a pic of the ball joint in the piece Jason linked to. Looks like a prevailing torque nut was used for what that’s worth
I have seen several ball joints come with Nylock style nuts in place of cotter pins. Some of them come with cotter pin holes, some without. You can say it should have a cotter pin and castle nut, and you’re right, but that doesn’t change the realityv – the part was likely sold that way.
Until you see proof that the nut has come loose and somehow contributed to a press fit failure of the ball joint, the ire you’re directing to the mechanic is excessive. I’m blaming the control arm at this point.
This (and padding prices) is why many mechanics will not install customer provided parts, or will not put a warranty on the longevity of the repair when cheap customer supplied parts are used.
To be clear: Nylock single use nuts can be fine, when specified as such by the manufacturer.
What I can find says that Nissan specified castle nut and cotter pin. (If someone can find actual Pao FSMs and translate, please do correct me.)
And even if we say “oh well the nut came out.” OK, where’s the ball joint? If it was installed correctly, it would still be in the control arm. It’s not. “Oh well it pulled out the top!” Then why is there no damage in the bore? “Oh well it fell out the bottom!” So your explanation is that the nut, the safety, AND the C-clip all failed at the same time? “The shaft broke and then it fell out the bottom!” Again: so it never had a C-clip?
And bear in mind, these are all things that get checked BEFORE installing the part. There’s just no scenario at all where a ball joint goes this completely missing without something major having been missed at multiple points.
I’m pretty sure the balljoint is still in the knuckle, but Jason’s pic doesn’t show enough of the inside of the wheel for it to be visible.
I also think there’s a high chance the control arm came with the ball joint installed, so might just be a crappy part that failed, rather than a mechanic screw-up. OTOH if the guy did install it in the control arm and forgot the c-clip, then that’s on him.
As an aside I can’t remember the last time I saw a castle nut on ball joints, all my cars in the past 2 decades had single-use nuts to hold the ball joints in the knuckles.
Just going to leave this link here:
https://nissan.epc-data.com/pao/pk10/3591-ma10s/trans/401/?full=401__001
Why do you care so much about being right about a stranger’s car?
I’m pretty sure the ball joint is pressed into the control arm from the top down and is a larger diameter, so the nut coming off wouldn’t let the ball joint come free. The only way to get the ball joint to come out like that would be to forget to install the C-clip.
It pretty much comes down to who installed that ball joint. If JT bought the control arm with the ball joint already installed, then it was bad before the mechanic got it, but he really should have noticed the missing clip anyway. If JT bought the control arm sans ball joint, then it’s most definitely the mechanic’s fault for spacing out on a basic safety feature of ball joint design.
That there fiction nut done came loose. The suspension forces acted on the ball joint, as they do, thereby un-press-fitting it. When the nut finally came off the bolt, the ball joint was ejected out the bottom of the control arm.
Jason – you’ll probably find the ball joint remains over there by the railroad tracks…
Oh man, that’s a nice pic to show the guys in the shop. Completely at odds with Nissan specs. If they’re smart they’ll fix this for free (including the oil pan) and give Jason some credit for future repairs. This does not reflect well on the shop.
https://images-stag.jazelc.com/uploads/theautopian-m2en/controlarm.jpg
(link for the picture so others can get there quickly)
Not all cars use a castle nut / cotter pin on control arm ball joints…
But some do, and Nissan specifies castle nut+cotter pin for this application. And even common sense tells us that just a friction nut there is probably a bad idea, as both vibration and impact can cause the friction nut to either slowly unscrew or fail suddenly (I learned this the hard way, as the friction nuts attaching my air filter to the carb started unscrewing themselves because of a broken air filter mount that transferred a lot of vibration; only found out when one of the nuts fell into the carb).
I have seen several replacement ball joints come with Nylock style nuts in place of cotter pins and castle nuts. Some of the ball joints come with cotter pin holes and you could reuse your original castle nuts. Some don’t even have that, and the mechanic would have to modify the part to install a cotter pin. A worrying trend in aftermarket parts to be sure.
Based on the fact that the ball joint seems to have completely unpressed itself out of the control arm, I’m sure Nylocks aren’t the only place they cut costs…
Well, the front fell off in this case, by all means, but it’s very unusual.
Chance in a million.
How much oil did it lose?