This is my first post to this forum, but I've been visiting even since before I got a Camaro.

Before having the car, I had the auto repair skills of a third grader.

Anyhow..

I'm a student at Arizona State University Polytechnic. About a month ago, I was being obnoxious with my car, and I ended up hitting a curb.

My estimated speed was probably about 20 or so MPH.

I wasn't sure at first what I had done, I just knew I had done something. I limped the car back to the parking lot and discovered that the driver's side wheel was bent out at the top, so that it was tilted away from the car. In addition, it was pushed backwards a couple inches so that any minor turn of the wheel to the left caused the tire to rub the wheel well. In order to drive the car straight, the wheel had to be turned 90 degrees to the right. Even then, it was a sad story, as the left tire was pointing a slightly different direction than the right, and so the tires would squeal a bit.

So I called my dad, like any desperate college student would do. And from there I began attempting to repair the car.

The first thing I did was got all types of consultation from everybody on campus, and the consensus was fairly universal.

Something was bent.

Cool.

So the first thing I did was drove over an hour away to a junk yard and bought a spindle. I had to do all the things that you would have to do to replace a spindle -- packing the bearings, compressing the spring, etc -- only with no real knowledge of what I was doing.

After I somehow pulled this off, the tire was straight up and down again, but still pushed back.

So I spent a long time staring at the car, before I realized that either, a) something that connected to the top of the spindle was bent, or b) something on the bottom was bent.

Since it connects at the top to the strut, I pretty much wrote that one off.

I decided that I needed to replace my control arm. So I went to another junk yard and bought the control arm, and proceeded to take off everything that I had just put back on. The first thing I did was took out the long bolt that goes through the control arm and the sway bar. After that, I took out that enormous spring from the car. I feel like an idiot referring to it as "that enormous spring", but honestly I don't know what it's called.

Anyhow, I proceeded to try and take out the second of the three bolts you have to take out to take off the control arm.

As a lot of you probably know, the control arm attaches at two point to what APPEARS to me to be the frame of the car, or at least some really sturdy metal. It goes between two metal sheets so that it is sandwiched, and the bolt is put through all three things. This is repeated for the other "arm" of the "a-arm". I tried to take out the bolt closest to the front of the car. The car was quick to deny me as there was no room to pull out the bolt after unscrewing it because the.. control linkage? was in the way. Whatever that thing is that the tie rods connect to in the middle of the car. I couldn't take that bar out because I didn't have a 3/4 wrench, so I decided to take out the other bolt instead.

And here's where I noticed something that looks HORRIBLE.

As I said, the arm is sandwiched by two metal plates. Well, on the arm that is towards the rear end of the car, one of the plates has been nearly broken off the car where it is welded to the frame. It looks like when I hit the curb, it somehow broke that weld. So now, I'm stuck with my car on a jack in my dorm parking lot with no real way of getting it back together.

I know my question isn't very clear, and I'll probably need pictures to help illustrate my problem..

But I'm going to go ahead and assume that I'll need to bend that piece back up to where it was before and reweld it myself..

Accurate guess?

 

other than that did it bent the frame in the front? You are probubly going to have to take it to some frame people b/c its probubly going to need a lot of heat to get it to bent. I did somthing close to what you did pulling into a gas station and my front wheel of my 79 t/a fell into and bent the frame,a arms,spendal, everything on the pass side. I had to buy a new car

 

No I don't think the frame is bent. The car sits fine where it is and everything.

 

wow, the fact that curb can do things like that to an f-body at these speeds is scary! i once hit a curb going straight, because of hydro planing when going way too fast on the wet road, instead of going with the 90° right turn. this was with my old golf mk2, but other than the rim, tire and a-arm everything was alright how can it be that the whole F-frame is junk after something like that..
anyway, i hope you can fix your camaro! all the best!

 

There are people that have portable welders mounted to trucks. Hire one. Do not try and weld this yourself. It takes tons of experience to weld something this important. If you f*ck it up, you can die, or worse; kill/maim someone else. Good luck to ya!

 

As far as the welding truck goes, MAYBE. But I live on a Polytechnic campus so I know we have welders.

And also, I think I can handle the weld. For anyone who knows about welding, it's an overhead T-weld.

So it's kind of an easy to moderate weld.

But yeah the fact that it did this much damage blows my mind. I guess that's what I get though.

 

The material is slightly different from what you would use in school. I would not call it an easy weld either. How much experience do you have welding?

 

is it the firewall thats maybe pushed back, this happened to me once when i ran over a median, i had a crack right above my A arm, ended up taking the car to a frame shop where they pulled the firewall out and rewelded it back together. this has to be done right or else you can have alignment issues

 

pictures? It sounds like you screwed it up pretty good. :-/

 

Since all the important suspension parts attach to the K-member, you might consider replacing that entire unit.

 

ouch man that sounds like alot of money and alot of busted knuckles.

 

Status update.

In order to remove one of the bolts on the control arm, I had to unbolt the K-member (control linkage?) on the driver's side. This was rather tough to do, as I had to beat a pickle fork into the joint with a hammer, then lay on my back and kick upwards extremely hard. After that the bolt had room to slip out. Now I'm on the project of removing the last bolt. Unfortunately before I can do that I have to go procure a 19mm deep drive socket. At least I hope that's what it is, because that's what I've been using.

Anyhow, upon further inspection of the broken weld, I will say this: the factory did a ****-POOR job. I've seen better welds done by the morons I went to highschool with. I rate the weld a D-. They weren't apparently capable of welding it all the way on, instead, it was tack welded to the frame. In addition, the part has metal missing from it as they it was shattered.

However.. it is possible that this was a repair done by the previous owner, rather than the factory's original work. Either way, I definitely blame whoever welded it in the first place rather than my hitting the curb. There are beads that rolled off the weld and were allowed to dry on the frame without being ground off. Part of the sheet that is broken was actually melted by the arc of the welder too. In addition, they welded only one side of the plate, not both, and it broke away from the weld, not towards, if that makes any sense. I'm going to get pictures tomorrow when it's light out.

My next project is to get that socket, then rent a generator and a welder, providing that the generator provides enough power for the welder (I'm just making an assumption here).

After that's done, I should be on the downhill slope -- it's just I've reached that ever painful crest of the hill.