Driver Side Rear Wheel has much more toe in than others.
01-12-2016, 06:44 PM
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Driver Side Rear Wheel has much more toe in than others.
So my car was involved in a collision with a curb, on the driver's rear, in which I snapped my control arms, bent an A-Arm, busted knuckle, as well as busted my rotor and a few other components in the rear subframe, I was on 18x9.5 squared setup at the time. I took it to the bodyshop and they replaced all of the suspension and brake stuff they believed needed replaced, i can list it all if necessary. Now I have sp2v1 wheels, and after they had the car alligned, every wheel is flush with the fender minus the rear driver's side. it is 0.3" toe in at the top. Is it likely my subframe shifted during the collision? I am taking it back to the body shop on Friday, but if they say it is not their job to fix because it wasn't part of the estimate, where do I start to fix my s? I love this car and don't want to let it go, but i also had big plans to track and set this car up for some autoX in the future, maybe not anymore. Anything helps, THANKS!
01-13-2016, 04:17 PM
#2
"Toe in at the top"? Do you mean the wheel has negative camber (is leaning inwards at the top)?
You can't eyeball the car's actual alignment, especially not off the body panels, especially if those body panels have been worked on. You need to get the car on a laser alignment rack and have them verify whether the car's suspension can be aligned within specs. That should have been part of the body shop's work (or they should have sublet it to a proper alignment shop) and they should have provided you with a printed alignment sheet showing that they fixed the car within stock specifications. This isn't a Civic. They can't just throw some bondo on there, paint it and think it's going to be good enough.
Did you go through insurance? Insurance will cover as many repairs as are needed to return the car to its condition prior to the accident. That means if you have to take it back for "round 2" of repairs, the insurance company still needs to pay for it.
The S2000 is very sensitive to having bent suspension components, so unfortunately a hit like this usually requires essentially everything on that corner of the car to be replaced. I've replaced numerous control arms and knuckles on my S2000 that have become bent out of spec just from regular daily driving on bad roads and track curbs. Unfortunately they can be expensive! The subframes are fairly tough, but they can shift around on a big hit, too.
You can't eyeball the car's actual alignment, especially not off the body panels, especially if those body panels have been worked on. You need to get the car on a laser alignment rack and have them verify whether the car's suspension can be aligned within specs. That should have been part of the body shop's work (or they should have sublet it to a proper alignment shop) and they should have provided you with a printed alignment sheet showing that they fixed the car within stock specifications. This isn't a Civic. They can't just throw some bondo on there, paint it and think it's going to be good enough.
Did you go through insurance? Insurance will cover as many repairs as are needed to return the car to its condition prior to the accident. That means if you have to take it back for "round 2" of repairs, the insurance company still needs to pay for it.
The S2000 is very sensitive to having bent suspension components, so unfortunately a hit like this usually requires essentially everything on that corner of the car to be replaced. I've replaced numerous control arms and knuckles on my S2000 that have become bent out of spec just from regular daily driving on bad roads and track curbs. Unfortunately they can be expensive! The subframes are fairly tough, but they can shift around on a big hit, too.
01-13-2016, 08:09 PM
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I have negative camber and slight toe in on the rear driver wheel, which I used a level to check relevance of fender to tire, which is how i noticed the negative camber at one side to be quite a bit more than the other, aside from being visually obvious. I will post a picture from the rear tomorrow morning to show what I am talking about, it may be as simple as tightening an adjustment, or maybe the control arms are slightly off since they were replaced, or the rear subframe shifted slightly and collared bolts will help fix the slight bit of play on the one side.
I know nothing in my suspension was replaced because i took the shops advice of it not needing to be based on the condition, and the wheels and tires needed replaced but the insurance was only going to cover one wheel/tire and they were not replaceable, so it was either a set of ap2v1 wheels with new tires, or fix suspension and not have wheels/tires.
I am considering taking it to firestone to have it aligned again after the shop re-inspection on Friday, so that if the shop says theres nothing wrong they did, then firestone can have an answer like "the suspension is preventing us from aligning it to spec," then i will have to re-open my claim and explain to them that I took the shops advice and now they car is visually beautiful, but still not mechanical 100%. I can drive the car just fine on the highway and not feel much if any stability issue, but I cannot find it in myself to push the car to even a moderate level in case there is something wrong.
The original estimate included suspension, If I agreed to have the wheels/tires replaced and not the suspension, and the body shop suggested it, will the insurance company still re-open the claim and pay to fix the suspension?
I know nothing in my suspension was replaced because i took the shops advice of it not needing to be based on the condition, and the wheels and tires needed replaced but the insurance was only going to cover one wheel/tire and they were not replaceable, so it was either a set of ap2v1 wheels with new tires, or fix suspension and not have wheels/tires.
I am considering taking it to firestone to have it aligned again after the shop re-inspection on Friday, so that if the shop says theres nothing wrong they did, then firestone can have an answer like "the suspension is preventing us from aligning it to spec," then i will have to re-open my claim and explain to them that I took the shops advice and now they car is visually beautiful, but still not mechanical 100%. I can drive the car just fine on the highway and not feel much if any stability issue, but I cannot find it in myself to push the car to even a moderate level in case there is something wrong.
The original estimate included suspension, If I agreed to have the wheels/tires replaced and not the suspension, and the body shop suggested it, will the insurance company still re-open the claim and pay to fix the suspension?
01-29-2016, 07:38 AM
#5
Front caster is the angle between the ball joint on the upper control arm and the ball joint on the lower control arm. Also known as set-back. Caster is the hardest alignment angle to get right on this car, because you're making blind adjustments then checking your adjustment. This is because to measure caster you must do a steering sweep(turn the wheel 20 degrees left, then 20 degrees right, then center). In other words, you do the steering sweep to get your baseline caster reading, then make an adjustment, then another steering sweep to see what your adjustment changed. It should be the first angle that should be changed, and also the hardest one to get perfect, even worse because most techs a.) don't know this b.) are under pressure to do the job quickly c.) have a hard time making the proper adjustment because they don't know which way the arm is supposed to move to get the angle they want.
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