Here's the situation... after a bad crash (front passenger side impact), I had the car fixed at a body shop. When I went to pick up the car, I noticed that the wheel on the front passenger side was pertruding outside the fender by about 1/2". All of the other wheels looked fine...

The body shop took it to an alignment shop to look at it, and they said that it's because the frame is not straight and it was not fixed properly. The body shop, however, insists that the frame is perfectly straight, and that it's a suspension issue. They told me I need the following parts for that side:

Knuckle, Upper Control Arm, Lower Control Arm, Shock

The alignment shop is saying that those parts are irrelevant to the problem and wouldn't fix it.

If anyone has knowledge in this area, can you please tell me what would be the most likely cause of the problem - frame or suspension? Thanks.

-Jeff

 

when my buddy hit a curb, it actually partially sheared off the front lower control arm pickup point off of the front crossmember. The alignment was totally fawked. A new front crossmember fixed the problem. Looking under the car, it was fairly obvious this was the problem. Jack up the car and take a look. If something is off-kilter enough to cause the wheel to stick out that far, it should be evident after a close inspection.

 

The alignment shop mentioned the crossmember in particular, so that would make sense. Now the problem is getting the body shop to agree and fix it...

 

well, take a look yourself. If its that out-of-whack, you should be able to tell just by looking. If they argue thats not the problem, tell them to lift up the car and point it out to them.

Also, if you don't mind spending an afternoon grunting and cursing on the floor of your garage, swapping out the crossmember isn't terribly hard, just kinda a pain in the ass... Definitely a two-person job too. You can probably get a crossmember from a junkyard for about $50, I'd imagine. Just a thought... if you're not up to it, thats perfectly understandable.

 

it's hard to warp a frame on a car that's a unibody

 

Structural damage to unibody cars happens all the time in accidents. The only time damage is purely cosmetic is only if non-load-bearing panels are affected.

 

yeah, I know MrFatbooty, my comment was sort of a joke. Unibody's don't have frames (which I'm sure that you know that already), I was just making a comment.