so severe it buckled my alloy cut a long story short I was map reading at night in a place I didn't know and hit a high curb and now the car pulls hard to the left.
I went to my local tyre place to get the geometry done (after buying a new alloy) on his Hunter rig but he said there is nothing he can do as the front left wheel is so out and to book it into a body shop. There is no physical damage that he or I could see but something isn't right. Bent wishbone ring any bells?
Any suggestions where I can take it down south to get it looked at as I don't fancy driving it to far or better still suggestions on what I have bent?
Thanks

 

Could try checking the hub - if its anything like the rear ones, they can bend in a side on with curb type impact. Compare gaps at the bottom between the bent and the straight side.

 

If I go the o/s wheel I can fit 3 fingers between the tyre and the wheel arch near the drivers door.
If I go to the n/s wheel I can only fit 2 fingers in. This would indicate that the whole wheel has been pushed towards the rear of the car approx 1".
Does this sound like an expensive job?

 

NE1 else have any ideas?

 

sometimes the bottom arms can bend quite easy. i've changed a few and in more extreme cases i've had to change the strut as well.

 

Could be, although if it's as bad as you're making out it could be a number of things bent.

The weakest point is likely to be the kingpin balljoint (the bit that connects the wishbone to the hub. If that's been tweaked the geometry will be altered in a way that's not immediately easy to spot.

Beyond that, it really is simply a case of giving everything a real close look and if necessary measuring the opposite side of the car.

Take a really good gander at the upper lobe of the hub where it joins the strut, and in particular the fixing nuts/bolts and contact area between the hub and strut mounting flanges. Look for flaking rust or paint as well as overt distortion.

Did the garage who tried to do the alignment tell you in what way it was out? If they did, you'd have some important clues to isolating the damaged components.

 

Thanks for your help, at least now I have a starting point.
The hunter alignment print out is as follows
LHS
Camber = 1o 44'
Caster = 2o 28'
Toe = -0o59'

RHS (good side )
Camber = -0o 35'
Caster = 4o 26'
Toe = -0o 04'

Total Toe = -1o 04'
Steer ahead = -0o 28'

Make any sense?

 

Gord knows, what ever comes standard with a year 2000 WRX (Australian spec) Impreza.
I have it booked in to get looked at tomorrow
Cheers


[Edited by Danny B - 10/13/2003 11:41:15 AM]

 

Just got it back on the road, turned out it was the n/s/f track control arm.

 

A tiny bit. Still shooting in the dark, but there's a little bit of moonlight to throw on things.

So it's running with one and three quarter degrees positive camber, and two degrees less caster than the other side.

This confirms what we already know in that it's clear that the wheel has taken a whack towards the bottom, and the decreased caster compared with the other side implies that it's also been pushed towards the back of the car.

This information pretty much reinforces what was suggested earlier. Look really closely in the area of the two bolts holding the strut onto the hub to see if you can notice them been forcibly moved. Same with the kingpin/end of wishbone/bottom of hub area - look at the one on the RHS and compare with the left to see if there's any visible distortion.

It'd also be worth running a tape measure between an edge of front crossmember and kingpin, and the rear caster block mounting bolt and the kingpin, then repeating on the other side to see if there are any differences in measurement. From this you should be able to discern if there's any distortion in the wishbone.

One question I should have asked earlier, does your car have steel or cast aluminium wishbones?

[Edited by greasemonkey - 10/12/2003 11:58:02 PM]