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Trailing arm refurbish

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John_Mc

John_Mc

Jedi Knight
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I'm currently in the process of refurbishing my rear suspension. I took the rubber stoppers out of the trailing arms and found a lot of sand-like substance inside (probably sand!) I had also found a similar substance inside portions of the frame. I'm not sure how it got in there unless the stoppers were left off at some point and the car was driven over gravel roads in that state, or maybe they were sand-blasted at some point and not thoroughly cleaned out afterwards? Anywhoo, I'm wondering what others of you have done, if anything, to the inside of the trailing arms. They are aluminum, are they not, or some other light alloy? There is no need to rust proof the inside, is there?
 
John- Go here to page No.8 and view the photo.

https://www.scribd.com/doc/92509/TrailingArmBushingsFinal

I found exactly the same white sand. Mildly reactive
with HCl acid. I believe the "sand" might be crystalized road
salt from use in winter climes with snow/ice.
Maybe calcium chloride?

Make sure you remove all the "salt" material from the coil
spring seating areas of the two trailing arms.

dale
 
John,

I had the same thing in mine when I had them off for powder coating.

I attributed it to aluminum termites.

Shouldn't be a problem.
 
These swing arms were probably sand castings. Probably leftover sand from the mold.
 
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