the other day I hit a curb with my front right wheel. (snow and ice ) anyway. I was going around a corner, not real fast but the car took a jolt, enough to crack a rim. After an alignment, if you look at the tire it is shifted about two inches torwards the rear of the car. What do you think is bent? What should I look for?

Thanks guys,
Josh

 

Look at anything out of the ordinary. IE: anything bent. Check your tie rods and your ball joints. If you see anything that looks funny might want to check it out.

 

A friend of mine did this exact thing on his Z. He bent the part when the lower front control arm attaches to the body. To get it fixed he had to take it to a frame shop.

 

what bends here is the lower control arm and the k-member. the k-member holds the lower control arm. im sure your unibody frame is fine. it takes a lot to bend those. check out your lower control arm. it will bent. but check the k-frame very well. compare both sides to see if it is bent. if the k-member is bent a frame shop will charge around 1300 to bend it back. there is a way around this though. get a new k-member. a stock one can be found for around 50-100 bucks and aftermarkets are around 300 or so. much cheaper then the frame shop. i swaped mine out with a aftermarket one when i bounced off a wall. you can loose a little more then 30 pounds plus there is much more room for headers and changing spark plugs from under neith. it can also by done by your self if you are mech inclined.

 

If the LCA is bent, what aftermarket replacement should I be looking at.?? might as well upgrade if i have to replace it. And how difficult to do on my own?

 

HMMMM....

Last time I hit a curb, I bent a rim.

And, I cracked my transmission case, and in a month my transmission put too much force on the internals. 2 rebuilds later

Oh, and right before that, my rear end was tweaked. I guess the pinion went at a crazy angle and I grenaded my rear end, as seen here.

 

I stayed with stock control arms, but i put in polyurathane bushings in them. Aftermarket control arms are adjustable but i dont autocross so i didnt need that. plus they only save 3 pounds on each side and they are weaker then stock. I saw a post a while ago about someone who was going over 100mph and the control arm broke, spinng him out of control into a safe grassy feild. then i heard the same story agian. another reason i stayed away from those.

to do this on your own isnt that hard. take off your front spring/shock tower, brakes and control arms. then support your motor on jack stands. the only way i could do this was by supporting it on the ballencer. a lot people have done it that way but others say it is not good for the motor. no one has had a prob yet. the steering rack has to be loosend and swung out of the way. as well a the brake lines. get to the motor mount bolts and remove those (a good to time upgrade to polyurathe motor mount bushings). then there are three k-member bolts on each side. once those are out it should fall right down.

for reassembly bolt in the new k-frame loosely and adjust the k-frame guide markers (in the wheel well) so that they are in the middle. i used zip ties to secrure the brake lines to the k-member.
then re install the control arms. install then equally. use a measureing tape to do that. that will insure a alignment job (done by a pro) will be easy to do. then reasemble everything else and your good to go.