[Steelej]

Hey Guys,

I recently had the snapped subframe bolt issue while I was lowering the subframe to rebuild my 4T65E gearbox. I went in a different direction to get it out and I didn't have a great deal of room to drill it out upside down and I was pretty sure I'd mess it up.

I decided to cut out a window on the chasis leg to reveal the subframe bolt sleeve and see what I was dealing with.

The sleeve is attached to a secondary bracket and they're both spotwelded to the side of the chasis leg but the secondary bracket extends all the way to the end of the chasis leg and is sandwiched between two other bit of metal and is spot welded together.

First steps for me was to drill out the spot welds then I decided to cut out the secondary bracket so I could remove the entire subframe sleeve and have better access to remove the broken bolt. I ended up taking the removed sleeve to a engineering company locally who removed the remains of the bolt without damaging any of it and preserving the threads. Funny thing is that only around of inch of that sleeve has threads right down near the collar you can see around the sleeve.

I've attached some pics so you can see what it looks like in there.

Pic 1 - Subframe bolt sleeve and bracket seen through the cut out window
Pic 2 - Sleeve and bracket cut out
Pic 3 - If you look really hard you can see the threads stick out from the sleeve half way down.

John.