how bad is this... safe enough to drive 10 min to the repair shop?

[earlyre]

so my brother sat down in mom and dad's garage to change out of his Mowing Shoes, looked over at Mom's '09 Taurus, and noticed this....

after supper, jacked up the car, took the wheel off, tried for a while to get the bolt lined up, and couldn't get it to thread into the captive nut on the other side.
Eventually he took the bolt out, to find this:

Pretty sure the threads are supposed to go all the way to the tip...
put it back together, and we're back to pic 1.

of course this is on a saturday night... dad's current plan is to take it to a local indie shop monday morning to see what they say.

 

[eljefino]

Looks like it's holding a control arm, so you need a tow if you can't figure this out.

Some bolts are NOT threaded all the way down, though. It's to help them go in straight on the assembly line. Yours is probably not going in because something shifted, but if you jack it up, move the tire, and muscle stuff around you could get it back in there. With loctite. Don't use your fingers, but use a dowel or narrower bolt (a "spud wrench" would be perfect) to get things sort of aligned then reinsert this one.

 

[earlyre]

Looks like it's holding a control arm, so you need a tow if you can't figure this out.

Some bolts are NOT threaded all the way down, though. It's to help them go in straight on the assembly line. Yours is probably not going in because something shifted, but if you jack it up, move the tire, and muscle stuff around you could get it back in there. With loctite. Don't use your fingers, but use a dowel or narrower bolt (a "spud wrench" would be perfect) to get things sort of aligned then reinsert this one.

yes, looks to be rear lower control arm.
in person it looks like there WERE threads to the tip, they've just stripped/ worn off/ etc.
had a jack under the knuckle, lifted it up to try and get the tension off. but even with the bolt out, there still seemed to be tension on the joint, and the angle involved, and with the lack of proper tools ( no pry bar, etc) he couldn't get it to line up enough to get all the way through the bush.

 

[eljefino]

Nah, that's how they look, those are tooling marks from the lathe approaching the real threads.

 

[FowVay]

Those are called pilot point bolts. They're supposed to look that way.

 

[oldhp]

Grind more of a point on the end of bolt. Put bolt in and use a open end wrench to tighten. As you are turning wrench, tap with hammer. Has worked many times for me.

 

[MaximumMini]

Chances are the vehicles weight or sway bars are causing an alignment issue so the bolt is missing the threads dead center.
Sometimes just jacking a bit more (or less) can get the threads started.

That "shouldn't" be an issue that requires a shop visit unless the bolt wont tighten once you get the threads started properly.