Welcome, to take advantage of all the forum features, please re visit the 'Welcome to the Forum' tutorial sticky on top of the W126 page, as well as the two DIY stickies.Torsion (Sway Bar) Repair W126
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I have a 1987 420 SEL that has a bunch of miles (as in over 300K). I bought it cheap and found out why when I tried to change the upper forward sway arm bushings. Guess what? The right side broke and the left side darn near did. I am an old (well not that old) aircraft mechanic and don't give up easily. After several bad words and a little research, I came up with a repair also. It copies the before mentioned repairs to some extent, except I simplified it considerably.
The long and short of it, I may post a detailed repair at a later date, if I see any future interest.
Good luck and I would suggest being ready to make this repair, or ready to take it to a shop before attempting the bushing replacement. The dirty atmosphere of the wheel well is an excellent place for oxidation (rust) of the metal under the bushing, and the internally threaded thin piece of rusted metal can easily break.
I still need to do the left side. It has slop in it, due to the void between the bushing and rusted bushing mount. This will cause the frontend to feel like it is loose and sounds pretty bad - like a loose clunk or thud - that's airplane talk for something not being right.
Anyway, I made this repair on the right side yesterday and it helped considerably. I will make the left side repair later and have the car aligned to see if everything is good.
Additionally, my repair does not have any internal threads, instead I had the repair piece made solid with external threads at the forward end for the bushing.
More later (maybe) - Ken.
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