1996 XJ country help needed

1- I have just discovered that the bolt that connects the trailing arm to the body of my cherokee is broken! the head of the bolt is gone but the bolt is still in the mounting bracket on the body, and the bushing in the arm. I got a new bolt from Jeep (9 bucks!!) but cannot get the bolt to come out! I took the nut off and tried to hammer the bolt out, but it will not budge! It is not rusty either !

2- Whenever i go around a left hand turn on the freeway there is a whining noise that i think is coming from the front end. It is ONLY when i turn the wheel to the left at freeway speeds. It sounds like tire noise (i have BF Goodrich All Terrain T/A's) I was thinking that because of the first problem with the connecting bolt, that the front end is now out of whack and the geometry of the front end is screwed up?? any ideas of what it could be? :confused1

to get that lca bolt out, try taking the weight off of the vehicle. dont know if thats what you were trying or not. as for the tire noise be a little more descriptive and tell us the year tire size engine and other basic information

sorry, the tire size is LT215 75 15 1996 XJ 4 door Country edition 4.0 engine 4X4 automatic tranny. it really sounds like the tire is riding on the corner of the tread instead of the flat of the tire when the wheel is turned to the left. but i checked the tire, and it is not wearing unevenly.

so factory tires. any lift?

no lift factory stock except for Monroe Road Levelor read shocks

bolt shouldnt have affected alignment, could be front axle bearings? never really seen anything like that

... a broken LCA bolt sure as hell is gonna affect your alignment! And you shouldn't drive on the freeway with it. Pretty much the only way it's going to come out is pounding the crap out of it (use a punch so you don't expand the end of the bolt and make it impossible to drive through), or welding a nut onto the end and twisting it till it walks its way out. If you can't get that to work, try cutting the point off flush with the bracket then grinding the stub back till it's in the hole and prying the LCA + bushing out. You can get new LCAs with new bushings installed for pretty cheap from even places like quadratec so I would just unbolt the axle end as well and swap a whole new LCA+bushings in if you can't get the rest of the bolt out.

I did bushings on my 96 last summer. The problem is that the old bolts are thinner in the middle than they are near the head/thread areas. That metal tube in the center actually deforms enough when that bolt is tightened that it squeezes in on the bolt. The inside diameter of that tube gets small enough that the thicker part of the bolt, near the threads/under the head, won't pass through it.

I cut mine with a sawzall. The blade will just fit between the mount and the bushing.

Like the previous poster said, I'd just replace both LCAs and bushings while you're under there.