Well these snow tires that I bought definatly aren't the best in the dry i take it. Car was understeering quite a bit and before i almost hit another car because the car was understeering while taking a turn but car decided to keep going into 1/2 of the second lane before fully turning. This time was the same thing, but decided to hit a curb while pretty much full lock again and the wheel hit it rim first so probably the worst for the suspension. Anyways here's the aftermath of it:

This is the Re-speed Sway bar end link, sheared the end link in half, and the braket bent out of shape


Another Re-speed product, this is the rear lower control arm as he calls it (tension rod replacement piece) the arm got pushed in that way and crumbled the bar


This is the end piece on that top part, 3/8" stell plate bent out of shape


This is the piece for that RLCA where the old steering box used to sit and also holds the Re-Speed cross-member bar. I believe this hit the curb and bent it out of shape.


Last but not least, the actual arm itself which bent backwards about 45 degrees.


Billy, from Re-speed is being very helpful right now to help me restore some of his lovely parts go back on my car, and I just bought 2 new lower control arms from mazda.

 

ouch that sucks to see! hope everything goes back together smoothly

 

Ouch man, that hurts. What are the damages to the car like?

 

Ouch sorry to see that Sam! I didn't think 20mph could do that to a car then again going sideways that is a lot of force on parts to hit a stationary solid object. Good luck with everything.

 

Inertia is a bitch. @ 20mph, it's 1,243,194.29 joules of energy (assuming a 2400 pound curb weight)

Sorry to hear about the wreck. Snow tires are terrible in the dry. I didn't realize that until driving our long-term Mazda 3 with fresh snow tires on it. Braking performance is greatly diminished, but then again, so are all the dynamic qualities of the car. The R8 V10 that I rode in had snow tires on and it was even having a hard time around corners and accelerating.

 

Sorry to hear about this man, but at least it is repairable.
An expensive lesson, I would imagine, but it always could have
been much worse (freeway on/off ramp, perhaps?).

 

Damages on the car arent' too bad, mostly just fender and inner fender being gone.

Somehow the front bumper (the mariah mod 4 which is fiberglass) was under the car but still managed to stay in one piece. I think we put on one too many layers of reinforcement glass on the bottom of that thing because that bumper came off so many time before and its still in one piece. Only thing showing on it is spider cracks but it alread had some before we even painted it.

The spring did hit the sturt tower area and bet a bit of metal there, but it appears to be only the edge and nothing else being out of shape. Also the edge of the rim is damaged but the tire is still holding air so it can't be that bad I guess. There is a chunk missing out of the tire so I might have to get that tire rebalanced.

Besides that i think everything else is alright.

 

I think this is why your supposed to wait until it actually starts snowing before putting snow tires on. That's some bad damage. I'll be home next Friday (the 4th) so if you have the parts and want some help give me a call.

 

Sorry for your troubles, but seriously... blaming the snow tires for not being smart enough to second-guess your driving style?

Sounds more like a problem with a loose nut behind the steering wheel, to me.

That said, when I got my current tires, I was shocked at how horribly the car was steering on the way home; it seemed almost uncontrollable, massive understeer, horrid cornering delay. really scary, but I couldn't turn around and take it back to the shop as they'd been closing their doors as I left.

Got home, looked things over... and realized that the installers had inflated modern, high-pressure, lower-profile tires to pressure levels indicated by the door sticker. Tires were better than 20psi below the imprinted max pressure.

Pressured them up, improvement was amazing.

 

I do watch my tire pressure properly, and i tried adjusting them upwards and downwards, and seemed to respond best at about 31psi.

As for me being the loose nut, if you ever see me drive regularly on the street, you'd be surprised how little throttle I use. Its normally under 10% throttle according to my Megatune, and with me always trying to maximize my fuel consumption, my cruising AFR are at about 16:1 and almost to the point where the car spits and sputters giving me no performance.

 

That sucks man. I'm surprised at the amount of rust on those new parts. Thankfully I live on the other side of the country.

Do you have any pictures of the wheel damage and the actual position of the wheel after the impact? I am having trouble picturing it.

 

I actually didn't take a picture of that, but if you're standing on the driver side of the car, looking at the front driver wheel, the wheel was pushed all the way back (towards the rear of the car) touching the inner fender where the door is.

As for the rust issue, all this has been on the car for about a year and a half now, and drove it through winter season last year and will be doing so this year also, and quite actually alot of it, isn't rust but more dirt stuck on. I had quite a bit of an oil issue at the track (pucking out of the filler neck) and it covered that side pretty good with oil.

 

Billy is a good guy I'm glad he's helping you out with this even though he doesn't have to, the sign of an enthusiast first businessman second. Score one for Billy from RESPEED! *hip hip Hurray!*

I hope everything turns out good, those are some mangled parts! :O

 

You should see the bare steel parts on his steering rack. Nice n rusty. I'll be painting mine before putting the rack in.

 

I realized on rereading that my comments didn't sound as friendly-teasing as I meant them; sorry, I wasn't really out to bust your chops or anything; humor fail on my part.

This now falls back into the "weird" department; Snow tires aren't notorious for catlike grip, but I don't recall back when I lived in the midwest ever having that level of grip issue with them. Sounds like some unknown factor still involved.

I am happy that your damage, though extensive, is fixable. I'd hate to see any well-loved first gen have to get put down because of an accident.

 

Sorry to see this man. Hope everything works out. I found a guy that sells brand new control arms with ball joints on ebay for 160 shipped for a pair. Half of what mazdatrix wants for one. Great seller too. Parts came in quick.

 

Ya, funny thing is that i was going to buy a pair off him about a month back, but now that i needed them quickly, i had to buy them from mazda at 244$ a piece and i bought 2 of them.

 

The Hankook snow tires on my Bimmer handle so well, I never bothered to even take
them off this year. Nice tires.

(Or maybe it's just that she handles like such a freaking pig, that I can't tell the difference either way).... lol. Sad but true...

 

which hankook model do you have? I currently have the toyo Garit HT ... thought they'd be better.

 

Bummer man. Well, you got what you needed.

 

that blows man.

 

got he car back on the road today ... still need to do the sway bar (waiting on parts still for that) and I'm still going to change the other lower control arm and rear lower control arm, but thats going to have to wait for a bit. Once I have everything back in, I'll be going back to get an alignment also and that should conclude it.