[MrMagoo]

Problem discovered. A weld where the lower control arm in the front end connects to the frame is failing. This sort of explains everything... the fact that the problem appeared suddenly, and then progressively got worse to the point where the car got to be undriveable was the joint fatiguing. It's almost but not quite completely cracked.

My guess is that a certain 7-8 mile stretch of I-78 near Philadelphia did not help matters. That was pretty abusive. I was waiting for the shoe to drop after that one, but it took a while to manifest itself. Stay off I-78 guys, it was like driving over railroad ties, go I-84 through Scranton instead!

For you Performance Cars afficionados, both rear (trailing) control arm frame mounts have already cracked and been repaired and reinforced (by me), so this is another area on the frame that can fail. I noticed that a fairly new Backdraft I saw last year had a reinforcing support welded to the tab and frame similar to what I did to prevent the tab from flexing and ultimately cracking, maybe this was learned through trial and error or perhaps they just thought it through from the beginning.The rear mounts failed after only a few thousand miles. I now have 16,000 miles on the car, and the front mounts are Kaput. Those 16,000 miles have been earned the hard way with some fairly heroic efforts on my part keeping the thing on the road during the last 5 summer driving seasons since I bought the car. I've never had the car in a shop, I've fixed everything myself, but since this is the front end, I'm having a frame repair shop handle this one.

This one of course is a bad one. I'm glad it didn't happen suddenly and at speed, or your friendly Magoo would probably not be writing this. It is quite probable that this sort of thing has not occurred on Backdrafts, but I guess you Backdraft guys can file it away on the list of the possibilities if you experience similar symptoms.


Thanks and Good Luck to all!