No, it was whack out of alignment, Front caster, camber, and toe a mess on both sides.
Nice to have finally found an alignment dude that took the time to unmuck the caster on that vehicle. Others would tell me no way to adjust. I think the sway bar bushings were contributing to the caster issue.

Doesn't walk on the highway any more

 

Yes I am necroposting my own thread. Because I can.

95 SC2 up on the lift. Replacing lca's and sway bar to frame bushings.

Reassembling, have sway bar in LCA on each side. Have LCA to cradle bolt installed on both sides.

Cannot for the life of me figure out how the new bolts that came with the AC Delco sway bar bushing kit, which is actually about 10 years old, will not fit and rotate freely in the captive nuts that attach the bushing brackets to the frame. The thread pitch seems fine and the setup is identical from 91 to 2002.

The bolts don't even properly fit through the matching die. It's like the thread on the bolt is too tall for the nut and anything else.

These bolts pin the sway bar to the subframe and therefore are under a lot of axial stress once installed. You are therefore supposed to use new bolts when replacing these bushings.

However, I have various old bolts that go in with moderate resistance and seem to hold fine. The issue is getting them started square to the hole while passing through the bracket. Yes this sounds like simple fare, but with the sway bar not mounted on either end yet, the holes don't line up until you load the sway bar and even then it's not that easy.

I took great care not to cross thread these but alas one is now cross threaded.

The bolts are grade 10.9 and the scary part is that the captive nuts are wearing down the threads on the nuts.

If I try to run a tap in there, obviously I must start square which can be done easily with no bracket or bushings involved. The concern is that the captive nut is harder than the tap as it made a child's play out of the 10.9 bolt. Memories of the power steering pump nightmare bolt.

Other options are drilling it out oversize and installing new threads. However, I don't know whether the new threads will be able to handle the axial load without pulling out. Zero experience with thread repair kits. I also don't know the OD of the captive nut so I don't know if it can be drilled out.

Last option just came to me. Buy that OEM subframe from GM. Those captive nuts should be pristine.

Suggestions?

 

The captive nut is probably harder than your drill bits and tap also. Can you open the place where the nut goes and install a new nut? Cut the side open so you can slide the old square nut out. I weld a piece of welding rod to the side of a regular nut to keep it from spinning. This works great up inside frame rails to install front bumper winches.

 

I still have not learned to weld, and I don't think I have the tools to cut out a piece of the subframe. I will probably have to take it to my mechanic.

Today I found a very knowledgeable person at advance Auto of all places. We determined that the bolts that came with the new bushing kit are not exactly M12 x 1.75. The thread pitch is off. This would explain why the new bolts won't even remotely start to thread into the captive nuts.

I have an old bolt I tried to drive in with my impact gun out of frustration. I was trying to get it in there anyway I could because even if it cross threaded it wasn't going anywhere. The captive nut actually wore the threads off the 10.9 bolt.

The bolts were put in at the factory with a good 3/4 of an inch of red loctite. Some was still on the bolts when I took them out. I'm wondering if the captive not threads are clogged up with rust and remnants of loctite. I'm going to try to find a very small wire brush and clean out the threads. But with the difference in thread pitch, I can only use the old bolts and I've trashed the remaining two. The first two are installed one on each side. Scratch that, one of the beat up bolts still goes in to one of the holes. This is all making very little sense to me. If I have to I will take it to my mechanic but I'm really trying to learn to solve these things on my own. Thank you for the tip about welding to the side of the nut.

I'll let you know how it all shakes out.

 

It turns out all of the captive nut threads just needed to be cleaned out which I successfully accomplished with my tap. They are in fact M12x1.75. the old bolts go in like butter. The new bolts go in with a bit of convincing but there is no stripping.

What I am now up against is that with the sway bar connected to the lca's, the LCA connected to the frame on one end and the ball joint seated in the knuckle on both sides, it is physically impossible to put the sway bar bushings back on to the vehicle where they were previously located. Obviously I must use the existing captive nuts so I don't get to choose where it goes.

The sway bar must come forward enough so that when it is raised high enough, the melting holes line up with the brackets. I have backed the sway bar almost completely out of the LCA trying to get the sway bar far enough forward to accomplish this but I am to the end of the threaded end of the lca's with the bolt and it's simply won't align.

This 95 was in an accident in 96 where it got t-boned gently but enough to tweak the frame. It seems to have been slowly creeping back to being bent over the years as the trunk no longer fits properly and a few other things. But it's always been alignable without much effort. When I raise the sway bar up, one bracket hits the frame before the other. Not by much but it is consistent.

Path forward
Disassemble and restart by mounting sway bar using the troublesome brackets in the front. I went to Great pains to make sure I could put the brackets back exactly where they were, so I will do that. The sway bar may not have been perfectly centered but the non-rusted portion is easily visible on the sway bar itself so there's really only one way that this thing should go back together.

Attach cradle to LCA ends. Both at same time if possible with a friend. If not, winch one into position, then put through LCA and the other end to the cradle. You cannot do one without the other because once you engage the steering knuckle you have very little play with the end of the LCA to get the boat through it

I will then recruit a buddy to try to do the other side at the same time I am doing mine. The bar shouldn't shift. Can use a winch to relieve tension on one side and then the other to get the end of the sway bar through the lca's. Seating the knuckle is a snap.

This is obviously not the order in which the operations were performed at the first time around.

The nastiness of the 97 was easy to put back together. This 95 is being a biatch. The holes are missing alignment by half a hole diameter. The sway bar is moving as far as I can in the lca's with the bolts about to fall off. There is just no more room for adjustment.

And I am damaging my rotator cuffs so I have to stop every other day.

But I will solve it one way or another. I should add that when the sway bar is attached properly to the lca's, the spacing between the LCA and the frame is even on both sides so I pretty much just don't get it.

But I will.