For the last few months my 93 DX has been making these strange metal on metal grinding sounds from the front end during hard right turns. Just the other week it started doing it almost contantly. A 30mph handbrake slide into my driveway had nothing to do with triggering this.

Anyway, I spent several hours trying to track down the source with no luck, until today. I was pulling the brakes apart to see if anything in there was rubbing when I noticed these spool shaped pieces cmoing out of the top of my lower control arms. I could figure out what they were until I noticed that the front sway bar lined up with them perfectly.

Turns out, both the bolt heads on the top of the links, where they attach to the sway bar were gone. Just popped right off on both sides, leaving the bar free to swing in its rubber center mounts and grind against my axles. I'm wondering if this is a common problem with protege's, or if anyone else has encountered this. Seems pretty strange to me, even on a 227k mile car.

Oh, and I made really cool custom endlinks with several tie wraps to hold the bar against what's left of the endlinks. Team Expendable lives on!

 

not surprising ,with that much milage ,thebolt do rust away . You can get universal ones from Energy Suspensions . That what I did when mine went on my 92 .

 

Ya, it is not a rare occurrence. When i bought my car it had 200,000 km on it and made the same noise. i had a broken link on the front and rear sway bar. I actuallt though my car handled quite well untill i fixed them, then i realized how much of a difference they made. get the endlink......they are not that expensive from a parts store....less than 20 bucks.

 

Just make sure to adjust the links evenly and don't torque on them too hard. I learned this the hard way after about a couple months of driving after replacing the end links. Both mounting ears on the sway bar snapped. Replacing the front bar requires the crossmember to be dropped just a few inches to be able to get it out. Before loosening anything, generously spray down all bolts wiht WD40 and let them sit for a little bit. AND BE SURE TO SUPPORT THE ENGINE either with a jack or preferably a hoist from above. It's not hard to do, just akward and alot of time. PLAN AHEAD.