Subframe replacement
 

I finally was able to do the subframe on my '05. 112000 miles, mostly all in NW Ohio/ SE Michigan. WOW!. I looked at the car on a lift a little over a year ago and thought, along with my GM Engineer buddy "well it's deteriorating but I have some time." Yikes what a difference a year makes.

I purchased an Ebay subframe from NC ($525 delivered), new sub frame bushings (4) ($160), an engine mount kit from Rock Auto ($76), sway bar bushings ($26) and sway bar links ($34) at my local shop during the job. I have the luxury of a heated shop with a lift, overhead engine support, transmission jack and willing friends. Overall it was a fairly easy job. The most time consuming part was fabricating the metal straps we used to attach the chains to the overhead engine support and getting the support geometry right. We did not do that on job day. The other surprising hold up was getting the lower control arms into place after raising the new subframe. We let the control arms "hang" from the ball joints during the swap - per the Chrysler manual. It was quite difficult to pry them back into place on the subframe (front and rear mount points) but we got it. I have also heard of control arm bolts being "frozen" due to corrosion. We had one - L FWD - that gave us grief but heat, a power steel brush, PB blaster and patience won the day.

The subframe is not terribly heavy with 4 guys but we used the tranny jack and rigged a platform to support the frame up and down. That made keeping brake lines out of the way, aligning engine mounts etc. during the lowering and raising of the subframe easier.

Again, generally a straight forward job. I would not want to do it without a lift - the OEM procedure uses a rolling support under the car to support the subframe during removal/installation lifting the car away from the old, and lowering the car back onto the new subframe. We worked with the car raised and brought the tranny jack up to the sub frame. Also I wouldn't have wanted to attempt it without at least 3 workers. One other issue-it would be easy, during installation to forget/miss the conical "pancake" washers that go between the bolt and the subframe bushing. They will stick in the old bushings and are hard to see. If the frame goes in without those, it will fall down and partially out in a short while. I was told that by a shop owner I know that saw the aftermath of that mistake.

Amazing but not surprising that Chrysler claims only a small production lot has a problem. I did an advanced search on Ebay and 25 listings for the subframe sold in the two months before I bought mine.