About 6 months ago I had the the trailing arm assembley in my 1973 replaced by one I bought bebuilt from a shop in South Jersey. The rebuilt assembly was a rebuilt bolt on trailing arm. Two days ago the trailing arm I replaced broke and the rear tire locked up. The tire was leaning at a 30 degreee angle from the car. Is it the the traing arm assembly that went bad or the person that installed it did it incorrectly? the installer of the arm was not the shop who rebuilt the assembly. The arm assembly is warranted and hopefully the shop who rebuilt it will honor the warranty. I am just not sure who I should use to replace the trailing arm this time? Should I use the same guy to bolt the new one on? Is special equiptment required to install the assembly?
What part of the trailing arm broke? Are you sure it was the trailing arm and not the left strut? Can't say I ever heard of a trailing arm breaking. Was the 30 degree lean in the vertical or fore & aft direction?
The trailing arm itself is quite strong, and the only thing holding it to the chassis frame is a long pivot bolt in the front, plus 4 bolts holding the spindle bearing assembly to the rear of the arm. Not a lot can go wrong there if the nuts are snug. There is not a lot of stress on the trailing arm, it simply keeps the wheel parallel to the frame fore & aft and it has a long lever helping it do that, so there's not a lot of strain on the pivot bolt. Most likely failure that would cause a wheel to cant 30 degrees would be improper assembly (loose or missing bolts), or a badly-worn stub axle failure (the part the swing axle attaches to at the differential).
The left swing axle and the left strut keep the wheel vertically aligned, so if the wheel is now at a 30 degree vertical angle, it seems to me that either the stub axle or the strut MUST have let go (the stub axle is known to wear through at a lan (edge) that is used, with a snap-ring, to hold the stub axle into the differential... end-play in Corvette stub axles is critical, and a saavy Corvette mechanic would check it as a matter of routine while the swing axle was loose from the wheel spindle. The stub axle would be my prime suspect. Once the stub axle lets go, it conceivably could cause the trailing arm to twist if the wheel is rocked hard to one side (eg, hard cornering when the axle stub comes loose).
Was there any advance warning noise? What were you doing when it let go?
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