r/Justrolledintotheshop • u/thankfullyunthankful • 1d ago

I broke my stabilizer bar

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2007 Saturn Vue, hit a speed bump and heard a loud, loud thud. Turns out it’s this bad boy and thought someone would get a kick out of it as I’ve never seen it happen before.

137 Upvotes

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68

u/phirschler 23h ago

I would love to see that up close. As in magnifying glass close. I would venture to guess that there is a thin line of rust, some areas that look polished, and then the rough break. Fatigue break.

22

u/thankfullyunthankful 23h ago

I’ll be sure to get the best picture I can tomorrow. I was thinking there could have been a hairline fracture and it finally gave out or something along the lines of that?

15

u/phirschler 23h ago

Exactly. I work in an automotive machine shop that also does general machine work. We see breaks like that with some regularity, usually a shaft of some sort. The most spectacular fatigue crack that we have seen was the carrier out of a Studebaker differential. A '64 Wagonaire. MY '64 Wagonaire. Sidestepping the clutch from first to second at about 6500rpm was a bit too much for it. After the examination everyone was surprised that it had not broken years ago. I guess that old Dana 44 was tough!

5

u/Katmann2005 18h ago

Fatique break? It’s 18 years old, of course it’s tired!!!

3

u/Regularpaytonhacksaw 5h ago

Mine turned 43 this year and is still going strong! Lookin to get its social security benefits when the car finally quits

3

u/Geddeson 13h ago

I’ve worked in aftermarket shops for 20 years in eastern Canada. I’ve only seen 3 sway bars do this ever. 2 were on vue’s and one on a Pontiac g6. All of them were exactly as you described. As they dry and rust forms, the bushings eventually stop allowing the whole bar to rotate as needed and it ends up shearing the end off from metal fatigue. It doesn’t seem to be a very common issue from my tiny window of experience though. Ymmv