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1993 Ball joint bolt to strut assembly broke off ! Need advice. 200

The ball joint mount will come loose with lots of PB blaster after a few hrs.
If you have a dremel tool use a small 1/8 diameter rotary burr cuttong tool (spherical). You can find these in Wal Mart for a few bucks. They are great for grinding a dimple in the center of the bolt, something which is hard to do with a drill if the broken bolt surface is irregular. If you don't have the Dremel tool, the burr will work in a high speed hand drill. After making the dimple in the center of the bolt, drill out the exact size hole for an easy-out. Get these both new and matched. Buy a good drill bit, not cheap ones. A Porter Cable tungsten bit will be more $ but cut better with the hardened steel bolt. The hole must be in the center. If not, the easy-out will catch the threads in the strut and damage them. If by chance the drilled hole goes off center a lot, which is really not hard to do, get a small punch and collapse the drilled out bolt, use needle nose pliers, screwdriver, chisel, etc to rotate and work out the bolt pieces. It's also possible to work free the bolt while using the punch to rotate the bolt when tapping with a hammer, ccw.
If it's really rusted badly, and since you have the broken bolt, asess the rest of the strut, like the top spring mount, and if it as rusted as well, cut you losses and find a good used strut.
Just a note on strut and ball joint assembly:
When replacing either strut or ball joint (or any other front end parts with exception of stabilizer link bushings), always plan on doing a front end alignment. There are no short cuts here.
The ball joint should be removed from the lower A-Arm first and then the four bolts from the bottom of the strut, preferably while the strut is off the car in a vise.
--
'89 245 sportwagon, destroyed by hit & run driver, RIP. '04 V70 2.5 T Sportwagon, 12k mi and '91 245 5-speed, 209k mi, replaced the '89






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