Technical stuff at the asterisks ******
Follow-up. I bought the right rear forward control arm for my 2000 Toyota Solara at a junkyard** for $50 (He said he had 24 of them!) but found that the bolt head was in a "bowl" and I couldnt' remove it.
**Thank you car-part.comThen was stymied when Firestone (and of course Toyota) wouldn't do the job unless they could buy a new part. They wouldn't even do it if I had the receipt from Toyota dated yesterday, or if I waived the warranty on the work. I began to wonder if I'd wasted $50!
But I went to Autozone and a sales clerk there had glowing recommendations for a guy at PepBoys and a place on Rt.e 40.
The guy on Rte. 40 had a hand made sign out front, Alignment 50 dollars, for sure the cheapest in town, and his labor estimate was a firm 105 dollars, lower than Firestone at 121 or Toyota at 210. I lost his business card and had to call the Kentucky Fried Chicken next door to find out the shop name. (the KFC girl was very nice, walked to the front where there was a window.) When I googled his shop to find the phone number, I saw that there were google reviews. I liked the google reviews. They were mixed, Ironically, it bothered me that they were so cheap.
The Pep Boys labor charge otoh came to almost 205 dollars, although that included a 35 dollar extended warranty which I wouldn't need on a part like this, that doesn't do anything, and wouldn't bend even when I wacked it with a mini-sleidge,
So one was too high and one too low and I wasted a day trying trying to pick one of them.
Then I remembered the shop a half block past pep boys, that had an excellent reputation, that our eminenet County Execitive had tried to condemn by eminent domain to build either nothing or another private business. Fortunately he was stopped, but the jerk still got elected to Congress. This was maybe 10 years ago. The shop has been in business now for 60 years.
He wouldn't give a firm estmate but said he thought it couldn't take more than an hour at $80 an hour. Droip it off at 6AM.
****** 7:45 he calls me to say that I have a choice of his cutting off the bolt and using another one for 165, or doing it the way the manual says for 265.He said he'd called Toyota and they had one 18" bolt in stock and he'd already sent someone to pick it up. For all that, he didn't call me to say the car was done until 4PM. If they were working on it all that time, he said nothing to indicate that. $188 total including $32 oil change I had asked for.
What he did was is cut off the head of the bolt, in that constricted area where I had been trying to get a wrench on. I thought he would use a torch, but when I got the bolt back, there are many parallel lines on it, from a saw. (I wonder if I could have sawn it off. I have a Harbor Freight reciprocating saw, and could buy a better blade ) (The replacement bolt was $34 by the way.)
Then he put the bolt through from the back, with the head now at the rear, not the front as it had been, and the nut at the front.
When I asked the owner why they didn't put the bolt in from the rearn in the first place, of course he didnt' know. (I think I once said something about the nut being fixed in place. Maybe that was a different nut. )
I knew there was another way to fix this, I just couldn't figure it out.