Broken Lug On Subframe - Recommendations?

[gsouth]

All,

After noticing a noise from the underside of my IS350 I pulled over and looked to see one of the plastic trays hanging down.

Upon closer inspection when I got home it appearer that the lug on the alloy subframe this tray is fastened to had snapped off.

I took it up to Chatswood where they put it on the hoist and sure enough the 'U' shaped lug has indeed sheered off.

They gave me 5 options:

1 - replace the entire subframe at a cost of many thousands of $$

2 - find a place that can weld alloy (they can't and cannot recommend anywhere)

3 - try gluing using a special 2 part metal adhesive (they tried this unsuccessfully)

4 - removing the plastic tray altogether

5 - tie the tray up with a heavy duty cable tie (they have done this while I think about it)

Firstly the service in Chatswood was first rate - I was there at 7:30 as instructed and they slotted me in with a mechanic straight away who spent quite some time explaining what had happened and the options to fix. His recommendation was to remove the tray, however did go out of the way to try and glue it, and then came up with the alternative option of using the cable tie.....

I'm obviously not going to replace the sub frame - major work and very very expensive.

Copule of questions:

- does anyone know how I would go about finding someone who could weld this in Sydney, preferable northern beaches? They would need to have a hoist as the car sits too low to the ground to get under it.

- what is the risk of removing the plastic tray? Both the service guy and the mechanic said it's no biggie, but I wanted to check in here. IT's the plastic tray that sits around the transmission sump and I couldn't really see what it was "protecting"

Cheers

GS

[melchels]

Can you claim on your insurance? Surely better to get the job done properly!

[ilv1004s]

use Q bond

i had the same problem on my race car

Q bond works a treat

[evolutune]

The girls 7 Series did a similar trick with a plastic undertray. I just used a self tapper and was done in no time.