Broken Sway Bar from frame

Hope everyone's been doing well on here.

Crawled underneath today to take a look at what needs attention and noticed the sway bar broken from the frame.

What should I be doing next?

 

Check the rest of your frame. With a hammer and screwdriver. Someone put some heavy bondo over damage and/or extensive rust.

I would not be driving that truck.

 

Heading back out to test it all out.

Would something like this be repairable?

 

Just pulled this piece off

To find this

 

I'd recommend checking the rest of the frame very carefully, if they spent that much time hiding that spot, I'm curious to see what else they hid.

 

I recommend wrapping the frame twice with chicken wire and following up with three heavy coats of bondo

 

If you bought that recently you may want to look into what recourse you may have against the seller. Failure to disclose, and/or concealing a structural defect is actionable.

 

In some states...

 

Holy shit…..thank god you found it before there was a catastrophic failure at highway speeds. That looks terrible and probably the result of extensive rust and/or an accident unreported. That looks like a 10 year tried to patch it.

 

Replace the frame or buy a welder and let the sparks fly! Seriously though, I wouldn’t drive that truck anywhere!

 

Wow.

Someone basically welded some shitty patches on the rotten ass frame, then coated it with bondo, and painted it.

Were you aware you bought something a previous owner hacked together and covered up? That's freaking crazy how rotten it looks.

I'd be piiiiiissed if I bought that truck a few weeks back, and found that, randomly. Like, someone knew damn well that rot existed, and chose to hide how bad it was. What the hell?

 

OMG

 

Having a guy from the local frame shop stop by tomorrow morning. Gave him a heads up what to expect along with pictures. We'll see if it'll buff out.

I started chipping away at what I could and noticed a couple more spots but none at bad as this. It must've happened recently because I crawled underneath the whole thing when I bought it and checked all the spots for rust.

Hoping there's a way forward without parting it out or cut it as a loss. Its crazy too because I've been driving it on the highway and around town but as others have said, I could be one bad bump away from catastrophic failure.

Any efficient way to getting all the bondo off other than hammer and screw driver?

 

Did the seller not disclose any of these issues? It's illegal in some states to sell a car with known safety issues.

We tell folks to look for differences in paint color/finish/texture or shininess on the frame, any texture other than "baby's butt smooth". Any of those are a flag to dig deeper.

Painters tool, specifically one with a steel hilt, may prove more effective due to the wide face. If you can get under an edge of the bondo, it should come up pretty easy.

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You forgot to remove this piece as well. And maybe the one further to the left.

 

Flew into the Danger Zone with that frame.

 

This looks like proof of what's we've suspected that these frames can rot from the inside out.

 

In this case, someone scabbed the frame over in several places to cover holes, and poorly at that. The nasty booger welds in the left side of Bill's red oval two posts up suggest whoever did the work may not have prepped the metal before welding, and definitely did a shit job. The fact their patch sheared the steel, that one plate cracked in half, tells me they either used crap steel, or didn't account for the stress that patch would endure. Sadly, this over to the left is another cobbled-together patch which looks like a mix of steel plate and sheet metal, "lipstick on a pig".

This shit is bad. Like, bad-bad. I'm not a lawyer-happy person, but I'd be suing the shit out of whever sold this to me if they didn't disclose all this, the frame looks pretty much trashed to me. But then again, it resonates when you look at what a previous owner did to the audio in the truck. It's all starting to come together now. Cobblers gonna cobble!

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I agree completely but when you look at the frame, it's clear it rusted badly inside.

 

People are fucking horrible for selling stuff like that without disclosure. I mean Bondo?!

 

Bondo is better than the spray foam and spray paint most of these clowns do…..I agree that people who do this suck. Had that happen with a jeep wrangler I was fixing up for my wife

 

I had a cathartic reaction to this video. A magnet...brilliant! Bondo (and spray foam, et al) is not magnetic, so the magnet makes it easier to identify those molested areas.

https://youtube.com/shorts/nFy_IgZCxM0?feature=share

 

In terms of frame repairs.....

Toyota, and everyone else, does not allow or authorize welding on frames or heat straightening of frames.

From CRIB T-CRIB-193-D
"Frame Repair Precautions: Sectioning of frames is not an approved repair procedure. Sectioning is defined as the partial replacement of components at locations other than an original seam or joint. When a frame is determined to be repairable by the replacement of individual components, installation should be at factory seams or joints and replicate original factory attachment methods with corrosion protection.

Since all Toyota and Lexus frames are made from High Strength Steel (HSS); Toyota does not approve of any heating method to stress relieve HSS during the repair process. Overheating HSS degrades the integrity, durability, and corrosion resistance of a frame.

‘Cold straightening’, defined as pulling, pushing and hammering, are the only approved methods to stress relieve collision damage. If a frame cannot be restored to original contour and dimensions by cold straightening during the repair process, it should be replaced."

Heating the frame with welding causes the frame to lose even more structural integrity because of it's make up and how it is formed.

 

Also, bondo on a frame is absolutely nutso hack shop behavior. I have NEVER seen that done before. The tech that did that should have their hands removed because who the hell knows what other nefarious abominations they have released on the roads.........They absolutely have the mindset of "awh hell they only say you can't do that to take your money. I've done this plenty of times". Just because you can, does not mean that you SHOULD.

 

Man, I've seen it done before. That's a trick that's been around since the dawn of the product. And before that, people would use lead fill and silver solder.

 

Toyota could make a modular frame just as strong, unfortunately, it’s not economical for them or any other auto manufacturer since they trying to minimize weight and material to save costs and improve mpg to meet CAFE standards.

You get hit hard and it’s a one and done for your vehicle when the frame is damaged.

 

The Ford F series uses a modular frame.

 

If it's an older vehicle yeah. We have replaced frames before in 4Runners and newer Tundra's that still had really high value. Most of the time it just costs too much for the insurance companies to want to pay to replace them VS just paying the value of the vehicle.

 

Is it just in the front? I was unaware they did that.