About a month ago I had a pair of KYB struts, strut bearings, sway bar links, and sway bar bushings installed.

A few days ago, I was backing out of a parking spot and heard a bang noise followed by a grinding sound as I backed up. Then it stopped. I took a brief look and couldn't see anything wrong (hard to see behind tire). When I got home, I saw this:



The bracket that KYB welds to the strut for the sway bar end link had pulled off the strut. The strut was completely undamaged, no tube metal was bent or pulled away. It looks like a bad weld that didn't penetrate the tube metal very far. The grinding noise I heard was the sway bar link end hitting the wheel when backing up while turning the wheel hard to one side.

Rock auto is replacing the strut under the KYB lifetime warranty. While the new strut arrives, I removed the sway bar link on that side so I could keep driving the car. The loss of the sway bar doesn't have much of an effect in normal driving, but I won't be doing any autocrossing for a while.

Steve

 

One that got thru quality control, good to hear that it will be replaced at no charge