I was on the highway and decided to take a turn at 70 mph in the rain. I got understeer and crashed my bird. Luckily I didn't hit anything major but I went up one curb, down another, and up another one again and stopped in a bush. The front left rim now has a chunk missing, the steering wheel is off center, front left tire rubs on left turns, and steering wheel vibrates at highway speed (I had to get home). Everything else seems ok, I'm going to get a new wheel and an alignment. Is there anything else that I might need to get fixed?

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'90 Red Formula Firebird
305 TPI 5-speed
TB Bypass, Ported Plenum
UBC Sports Car Club

 

That sux....

My buddy did the same thing. Curb.. Chunk out of pass mag. and a steering wheel that would quickly snap left when released. (I mean you didn't have to turn it to make a right handed turn)

Turns out the frame broke. In your case I would inspect everything, possibly replacing it anyway before you get it aligned (center link, inner/outer tie rods, idler arm, ball joints)... You may have bent the strut rod also.

 

Have your tie rod and knuckle checked out. Those bend easily when you whack them on a curb.

BTW, where can you do 70 mph in Vancouver? Even the freeway is limited to 80 km/h. 70 mph is 110 km/h. Gotta take it easy with these cars in the rain.

Hopefully it won't cost you too much to fix. But if you tie rods/knuckle needs to be changed, you may find yourself with a C$500+ bill, not counting the rim/tire.

 

It was on the way to UBC at the right turn off the highway. The limit on that turn is 60 km/h and I should've known better because my front tires are skinny and bald. I hit 2 curbs at almost 90 degree angle. When my dad saw he just said "Silly boy, that should wisen you up".

After looking more closely at the car I can tell that the left front is about half an inch lower than the rest of the car and the left inner tie rod looks pushed in to the relay rod. I checked the frame and it doesn't look broken but I may have missed something. Where did the frame break on your buddy's car JoelOl75?

 

You bent your spindle....Plain and simple.

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87z 383,afr 190's, comp hyd roller(242/248-.540/.562,114 sep),Ported and polished mini ram, 30lb inj, 3.42 gears, tremec 5spd, , 1,3/4" slp headers, speed pro bank to bank-wb02.
"Just remember children, no man can beat you once youv'e found the cliterous." 'chef'

 

Actually, there is quite a few parts that could have been damaged...knuckle, lower control arm, tie rods, etc. Have a good suspension shop scope it out for you. You may get lucky and be able to find a wrecked F-body in a junk yard that has a good front end to salvage these parts from. It will keep the costs down. The more you can do yourself, the cheaper it will be.

Look at the bright side, it could have been worst. Good tires on these cars are a must, even when you are just doing the speed limit in the rain. Aquaplaning is a horrible sensation to experience. Done that a few times when I live on the West Coast.

The worst thing is, now you are facing a bus strike on Monday.

 

Hey dude don't buy a whole new wheel. I know of this company in Surrey that does excellent work with aluminum wheels( I assume you have the 16" alum wheels) they will just add material to the wheel and it will be good as new. I assume you're a student like me and have better things to spend your money on. The place is called Panther precision machining and they're in Surrey. I'm sure there is also other places in Vancouver to go for alum wheel repair.

Hey I have a worse story for you. My buddy (who happens to be my neighbor and the same age as me) was driving his GTA alone one day. He stopped at a light on Fraser highway in Surrey when it was still wet after a rain and he hit it a little hard off the light and he ended up sideways into a telephone pole. The car was a total writeoff. Even though I have my own F-body, it was a huge disappointment for me and even bigger for him that it was gone.

 

i love racing down highway 1 the fastest ive gone though is 200 kph.i don't know i never hit full throttle when i go for top speed i just slowly edge up the speed.don't know why but im changing my bad habits next time it's WOT ALL THE WAY

 

Crap I have finals in 2 weeks, now I'm really screwed. Anyway I think I'll take it to a suspension shop and have them check what needs replacement. Can any of you guys recommend a place?
The left front is was the first wheel to hit the curb, it looks like all the damage is on that side. I guess it could have been worse, I could have rolled the car or smashed into someone else.

 

Just grab a couple of different quotes about what is wrong. It would be even better if you could get them to actually come to where the car is parked as you probably shouldn't drive it.

Most body shops can also tell you what is wrong with your front end too. At this point, you shouldn't necessarily get the work done...you just want one of these guys to scope it out and tell you what is wrong with it and give you an idea about the cost to fix.

The more quotes, the better as you'll probably find a couple want to replace EVERYTHING and others may miss something. Somewhere in the "middle" will be your correct answer.

With these kind of accidents, it is quite difficult to tell you what is exactly wrong through the internet without actually seeing the damage first hand. Just a few degrees of camber or a 1/10th of inch of too much play can make a world of difference.

If you can get an idea of what the parts are that are damaged, then you can consider alternatives (new vs used) and possibly even install it yourself and have an alignment shop adjust it for you. But it really depends on what exactly is wrong with it.

Yeah, be thankful that it isn't a lot worst. Right now, it is just an inconvenience that can be fixed with money.

 

Sounds like you hit the curb ALOT faster than my buddy. If the wheel shifted back it doesn't sound too good. The spindle is cast, and cast really doesn't bend. Maybe you lucked out and just hornshwaggled the a-arm.

 

I ran into a curb pretty hard in my 85 after i first got it, and managed to mutilate practically everything in the fron suspension (bent spindle, bent strut, bent tie rod/centerlink, oh yeah, and i bent the frame at the steering box mount as well as shifted the whole thing back about 1/4" on the pass. side. Miraculously IIRC the A arm was fine though.) and i was only doing maybe 30ish riding out a burnout. It sounds like you have done 5x as much damage as i did.
...ed

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Ed Maher - Moderator @ The Carb Board
92 Z28 Convertible - Quasar blue / Tan top
LB9 4L60 GU2 G80 - stock, soon to be sleeper
-=ICON Motorsports=-

- Definitely prototypes, high powered mutants of some kind. Too weird to live, too cool to die

 

OK, I took the car to the garage and got it on the lift. The control arm was bent a bit and the guys there said I would have to replace that and the tie rods before they could tell if anything else is damaged. There frame had no cracks or anything, I hope it's still straight.

I went back to that turn today to try and find my chunk of wheel but all I found was the wheel weight. I was DAMN lucky cause the tire tracks were about half a foot away from a HUGE lamp post. Imagine 120 km/h straight into that thing!

 

Now I've got the car apart and I've found a few things.
1. The left wheel is harder to rotate then the right. I'm guessing the spindle is bent or the bearings are screwed up.
2. I took off the left tie rod and the steering wheel is still about a 1/4 turn off center so it's either steering linkage and/or frame is bent.
3. I think those are torx bolts mounting the caliper but what size are they?

Thanks for all the help guys I wouldn't have even tried to fix it myself without this site.

 

The caliper is held on by 2 allen wrench bolts. I believe they are 3/8 inch.