Not exactly sure which came first as I didn’t catch it in time (obviously). From what I see it looks like the bolt head has been gone for awhile.

 

I think those of you that have this issue should keep your receipts and file a complaint at https://www.nhtsa.gov/report-a-safety-problem#index If there's a recall, you will be reimbursed.

 

I also take that time to grab a red rag and sling a little oil on the frame welds and other points that may attract rust

 

This is a family driven vehicle, we have had it serviced at the local ford since we bought it new. 150k 2016 crew XLT. Told every time how impressed the truck looks during inspection, and passes with flying colours. Clearly, there was a fracture at the top which has rusted, but it gave out as I just arrived into our driveway this afternoon. Was driving on the highway about 10 minutes before. Anyone have advice or can you confirm how your experience was getting it fixed (in Canada).

 

Wow! This should not be happening unless the truck was really rusty underneath. The trucks in these pictures are in pretty good condition

 

After reading the totality of the posts, we checked further, the bolt/nut (picture taken from the front of the truck towards the back) from the other side appears to be missing.

We compared to the side that isn’t broken, and it clearly has a bolt.

Broken side, clearly suffered from rust (Ie not recently sheared off) and there is no nut.


From the unbroken side, there is clearly a nut on the front which is missing on the broken side.

If you look back at the other pictures, you can see that the bolt simply slipped out of the unfractured front section.

It would be helpful if someone who works in the automotive industry could confirm if this would be over-torqued at the factory? Or, is this a maintenance item that would have either been over-torqued or should have been caught in the annual inspection?

 

OK, car guy with 35 years experience checking in.......with questions.

First, let's look at the failures here. On all of the trucks pictured, there's a common thing here - it seems to be the front mount for the lower control arm.

Now, on a normal day, this is a very easy failure to replicate. Just crash the front of the truck into something and catch that tire....like a small offset overlap crash test. But none of the trucks were wrecked.

But, if you consider it, banging a pothole isn't much different, but the truck's frame shouldn't break in that situation. It is putting a rearward moment of force on the front suspension so it makes sense that the front lower mount would take the beating.

So let's get to the questions -

1. Were any of these trucks ever wrecked?
2. Were any of these trucks lifted?
3. I am interested on rustiness, but let's face it - we've all seen some REAL rot boxes cruising around, and their front suspensions aren't ripping the frame off.

I'll go out on a limb and say that this IS a function of the truck's design for crashworthiness, but I think the shear point here may not be as strong as it should be, as if this IS what it is, what we're seeing here is some sort of stress factor at work, creating fatigue in the frame bracket and then causing the subsequent ripping.

These three in the thread here are all a little too similar for my liking......there's a common connection here.

Tim

 

Thanks Tim,

In our case:

1) no crash, not even so much as a light fender bender, pot holes on occasion, yes.

2) not lifted, nothing aftermarket done to it.

3) told that our frame looks good for a 2016 in terms of rust, but I don’t have 35 years of experience!

A question back at you… thoughts on the follow up post re the missing nut? Seems that if it was only held in the bracket on one side, it would cause a pretty significant increase in stress on the side that broke. I would really like to know if that is part of a typical inspection.

Ryan

 

Ryan,

I considered that possibility after I typed my post.

But after considering how the force would travel through the suspension, I'm not sure if the missing nut is a contributing factor, or a symptom.

If you consider, the bolt is retained by the nut, and this arrangement keeps the control arm from pulling OUT from the vehicle. When the control arm is located within the brackets, it should be decently well retained from a front to rear perspective.

That said, I think it could be conceivable that a missing bolt COULD create this failure, but you would see it on the bracket opposite of the broken bolt. If the lower control arm was allowed to pivot from the end that the hardware broke on, the opposite bracket would then be levered against with additional leverage applied by the length of the control arm.

In a normal circumstance, you would hear the control arm knocking around LONG before much damage was done, and typically with something like this, the brackets would be bent as opposed to shearing. The shearing tells you right away that the steel was either brittle, and it ripped, OR there was stress factor like a small crack, and then that began the shearing from fatigue.

Am I making sense on that?

Tim

EDIT - after looking at YOUR pictures specifically, that is the head of the bolt that has snapped off. This likely occurred when the bracket ripped, and the force of the suspension overcame the tensile strength of the bolt.

 

It's hard to tell from the pictures, but it looks like the head of the bolt broke off. If that is what happened then it would allow the other side that still had the nut on it to flex back and forth since it doesn't have the bolt running through both sides of the bracket and tightened down. That would eventually crack the metal causing the failure.