Ball Joint bolts

[Turtleman]

Hi all just wanted to post this up as a warning to check your upper ball joint bolts
Had word from a member of my 4wd club doing a trip with 6 members that his 2010 Challenger had the front wheel collapse in Birdsville entering town and at low speed thank god .....short story towed back to port Augusta to Mitsubishi dealer and was told no warranty due to raised suspension yes and those 3 bolts holding in upper ball joint never touched for new suspension funny thing is the other side was loose also hmmmmm on reading up on this MMA did a recall on Tritions for possible loose upper ball joint bolts not torqued up to spec at factory well well maybe challengers early ones should have been recalled he will be in contact with MMA not taking dealers no warrenty reply and $4000 to fix it
On look at my challenger those bolts don't even have a nut to lock them in underneath ?
He is stuck in Port Augusta at the moment with car waiting on MMA for their side to this

[BMN]

Thanks for the heads-up, will do a spanner check tomorrow. Hope your mate gets back on the road without to much fuss........$4000 sounds like some other damage was done in the collapse ?. Fortunately front end collapses tend to happen at low speed, end of braking, carpark turning etc when there are no velocity forces in play.

[Pauly Faulkner]

If they are the ones I'm thinking of that thread into the BJ you should replace with slightly longer and put a nylock underneath for added security. Doesn't take much to overtorque and strip the threads either.

Check if they are grade7 or grade10, if they are grade7 upgrade to 8.8 and put a nut on.

[Turtleman]

You would think it's a safety issue with these bolts and bolt and nut added like most cars have
So moral of the story do off road and rough roads mean possible loose bolts and wheel comes away from upper arm I think a recall is needed to address this with adding nuts under the bolts ... This is one case how many have we not heard about on challengers and tritons here and overseas

[Jeffwatkins]

As someone in the industry once said to me "manufactures have been building cars for over 100 years and still can't get it right."

[Toddyh]

No warranty due to raised suspension actually seems fair in this case. Whoever did the suspension work would have undone those bolts to install the new struts. Either they didn't tighten them up enough after or over tightened them and damaged the bolts. I'd be chasing up whoever installed the suspension rather than MM.

Also I believe that recall was for lower control arms not upper.

[4wd26]

You would think it's a safety issue with these bolts and bolt and nut added like most cars have
So moral of the story do off road and rough roads mean possible loose bolts and wheel comes away from upper arm I think a recall is needed to address this with adding nuts under the bolts ... This is one case how many have we not heard about on challengers and tritons here and overseas

I think you have just pointed out the obvious

how come we have not heard more of this type of failure if it was common or a manufacturing fault

seems to be more a suspension installers problem rather than MMA

for what it is worth, I had loose, lost nuts on the top strut tower after getting suspension professionally installed, 1 nut missing, one loose

cannot take anything for granted these days and daily pre inspection of those vital/ life threating components is advisable when remote, Wheel nuts, suspension, oil leaks

not much help after it happens though.....