The rear of the car has been acting a little squirrelly as of late. It has been most noticeable during wet conditions when taking a slow sharp turn and the rear loses traction along with a slide.

The car has NEVER done this, so I suspected the awful replacement tires I had to get 2 years ago when I ran over a 5/8 inch lag bolt with a front tire and then by the time I made it to the tire store, the bolt dislodged from the front and got ran over by the rear tire. All the tire store could get on short notice was Nexxen tires and even though they had reasonable UTOQ numbers, they were awful tires.

For the squirrelly traction, I suspected the rear carrier bushing because its been the culprit before. The bushing is relatively easy to swap out if you have the tool (which I have), but it didn't completely address the problem. Next, I figured on replacing the tires.

The front NEXXEN tires wore out pretty quickly and were recently replaced by General GS R-Max tires (the tires I had that got punctured). So I decided to replace the rears even though they were wearing very well (evenly) with about half their life left. As I'm swapping the tires, I take a look at all the links as well as the new rear lower bushing along with checking the tightness of all the nuts and bolts. Everything is tight and everything looks in good shape except the inner bushings for the toe links. Both inner bushings are cracked and obviously separated.


Passenger side, not as obvious bushing cracking.



Driver's side, cracking is more evident.

I don't know what brand the toe links are, but they both failed similarly. I have a mix of rear link brands: OEM Mercedes, Meyle and Lemforder. But I don't know who made the toe links.

For some reason I had a set of Lemforder toe links laying around, so these are what's going in.


I may have bought these back in the day because they are silver and match my OEM aluminum front link.

I did run an all heim joint rear at one time (still have the links), but the quality of heim joints has gone down since I first got them 20 years ago. I have recently found an actual "Made in the USA" heim joint supplier, but that's an expensive project for another day.


Lovely adjustable heim joint links. Notice the weather boots on the ends. Too bad the easy to get heim joints are all made overseas now. The overseas joints only last a few months before they start clicking.

 

Do you remember the torque specifications for the rear toe arm? Do they need to be torqued under load like some control arms?

About to do my own as mine are shot and whoever was in there last (under the previous owners ownership) seemed to have replaced the eccentric bolts with regular bolts so my alignment shop was not able to align the rear toe.

 

The bolts are final tightened with the weight of the car on the suspension.

I don't remember the torque specs.

You definitely need the adjustable OEM bolts for the fronts of the toe links,

I did swap out all my nuts and bolts for ARP stainless, except the toe link bolt of course.