Stripped the captive nut in my front panhard rod

ne-crock wrote: cars sitting on my drive till saturday now!

he managed to get a nut in but had to grind it down a fair bit to fit between the captive nut and the curve of the axle,

all held up well on the drive home so seems promising

Nice one! What a star

I'm a bit late to this party but never mind!

I had exactly the same problem and had the thread restored and a bolt bigger than the original turned down to the same diameter as the shank of the original bolt with an inch or just under of it's original thread left by it's head and the thread for the captive nut tapped onto the other and then a nut welded on the outside of the panhard rod bracket.

This meant it had two threads. The only thing is the threads were of a different size & pitch so they wanted to screw in at slightly different rates. Mine was fine like this as the different threads created tension and it won't come undone.

Kirkynut

this happened to me the wheels wobbled as though the car was in self desruct mode , anyway i had to get the back of my axel cut and had a bolt welded to the rear of this , other than that you need a new axel , its a little bugger to get to the back , its under the passenger side spring mount.

I googled the issue and this 11yo thread was first. I though I will update it for anyone else looking. 

My issue was as described by the OP: stripped thread in the captive nut + elongated hole at the front. 

I first used the thread repair kit. 12.4mm drill (part of the kit) made a quick work of drilling the stripped nut out. Remember to use drilling oil, just in case. 

The thread insert was M12x1.75 (also part of the kit) and it matched my bolt. Double check if it does in your case. Pictures may look mirrored to you all, but keep calm, it's continental Europe  

 


Tips: 
- using cutting oil 
- when tapping, back off ans clean the tap regulaly. It's better to be slow here than break the tap
- the front hole is too small for the tap, I had to thread it as well just to get to the rear 
- lock tide the thread insert 

Once this was done next is the oval hole at the front. Without fixing it the problem would return ruining the effort in the back. 

I found an oversized washer with M12 hole and cut two edges off of it to fit in front of the bracket. 
To make sure the hole aligns with the tapped thread, I screw the screw in before tacking the washer in place. 

Don't judge me on the welds, a battery in my mask decided to quit today and I was welding blind. 

 

A quick test showed major improvement. 
 

Overall took 3h to complete end to end.
​​​​​​Have fun! 

I hadn't seen this discussion, but, I'm surprised that no one suggested this - it's exactly how I would have dealt with it.

I've done quite a few "helicoil" repairs over the years, some in steel - captive nuts in the anti roll bar mounts underneath a Grand Vitara, captive nuts in bash plate mounts on a Pajero - others in soft aluminium, the intake plenum on a Mitsubishi 4G93.

I keep a stock of certain common sizes, you never know when you'll need them.