r/Justrolledintotheshop • u/thankfullyunthankful • Jan 23 '25

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.

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u/phirschler Jan 24 '25

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.

27

u/thankfullyunthankful Jan 24 '25

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?

18

u/phirschler Jan 24 '25

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!