So, I broke the front bolt of the sway bar bushing clamp on the driver's side. There's no room for me to drill and tap, so i'm going to weld the one side of the clamp. Aside from keeping the welding unit's ground clamp as close as possible to the weld, with no paint or rust at the ground, should I disconnect the battery, or any other components?

I will probably disconnect the two terminals of the battery if no one responds, but the van doesn't seem to like having the battery disconnected.

What are your thoughts?

 

Is there any kind of a stub left to grab onto? Extractors are available that can grab on to the leftovers of a broken bolt.

In addition to disconnecting the battery, I’d recommend completely unhooking and removing the PCM from the van. In theory the battery being disconnected should prevent current flow through any of the modules, but welding generates a lot of current and the potential is there as long as the wiring is hooked up.

 

+1 disconnect the battery. Just got done replacing a battery, alternator, and vss in my truck. All I did was ground out the starter wire to the block for a split second. Everything attached to the block ground wire got fried and that was only 12 volts. I got lucky, but I was lazy, ain't gonna happen again.

 

About 2mm is sticking out. I will have to grind it down before welding. That bolt was a pain to turn every step of the way. I had a feeling it was going to break, but the threads looked good, and I kept using PB Blaster. It must have been rusted inside of the frame.

I don't know where the PCM is, but I do know where the TIPM is, so maybe I should disconnect that, even though it's sort of a pain.

 

Sorry to hear. BTW, what is a VSS? I'm going to do a starter soon, if you don't mind sharing how it happened so that I don't make the same mistake. I'm a shade tree with little experience.

 

PCM is in the left front of the engine bay. It’s kind of tucked into the fender, between the battery tray and headlamp housing.

Disconnecting the TIPM is probably a good idea as well.

 

VSS is the vehicle speed sensor, it attaches to the transmission and tells the speedometer unit how fast your going. I wasn't working on a caravan, I had to replace the torque converter bolts in my 91 d150 pick up, and the starter has to come off to get the inspection cover off the bell housing of the trans. I pulled the starter back and it grounded the positive cable from the battery to the side of the block, I heard it and pulled it away from the block, but it was too late. It's a project truck, so I wasn't really pressured to disconnect the battery. I usually do on our daily driver vehicles just because of what can happen. Next time I'll just take a minute and disconnect the battery. The system does hold a bit of stored power so it wouldn't be a bad idea to turn the key on after you disconnect the negative cable, or you could disconnect both cables and touch them together to dissipate the stored power. But because I got the engine block grounded to the frame, and a ground wire from the frame to the alternator, and the ground to the vss was grounded to the same spot as the alternator and the battery grounded to the frame with the block it fried everything on the block to frame ground, everything else was fine. The ignition unit is grounded near there, but it still starts and runs. $170 for a battery, $170 for an alternator and $40 for the vss, I got lucky it could have been much much worse.

 

I'm surprised your incident killed the battery. Your cost on the alternator could be worse; I pay nearly $300 every time I replace mine.

Thanks for explaining your scenario so that I don't have to make the same mistake.

 

While I am at it, should I disconnect any ground cables/wires that are within easy reach?