Rear suspension damage...
 

So my brother was driving my car (yes we've all heard this one before) and somehow ended up spinning the car and hitting and climbing over a curb pretty hard with the driver side. He won't tell me how fast he was going, but it was enough to totally trash both driver side wheels on my SE. The car is pulling pretty badly to the left now, and the rear swaybar appears to be bent. The car is also visibily 'crabbing' (as in angled sideways when going straight) to some extent. The whole thing has me pretty sick...I'm scared the car has frame damage. My extremely clean GSL-SE...

Has anyone else had similar problems before?

Just when I get my racing beat manifold in...


:(

jeez, i used to beat down my brother just for wearing one of my shirts.... i can't imagine what i'd do if he wrecked my ride.... murder?

That sucks. Something like this can really ruin your day. However, after a proper mourning period you can begin to move forward and maybe get things back on the road.


Things to check:

Front:
Lower control arm
Strut/spindle
steering linkage
front crossmember

Rear:
Rear axle, (almost certainly bent).
wats linkage and anchor points

Hopefully no frame damage.........

He'll at least be paying for repairs, right?

Unfortunantly, the kind of people who abuse other people's stuff seldom pony up!

He told me he is going to take care of it, and I know he will, but it still makes me sad.

check your 4 link links and also the mounting points for them to make sure they aren't tweaked. Also check the stabilizer bar and links... make sure your rear coil springs didn't get knocked out of place... also make sure your shock mounts or shocks didn't get tweaked either...

sorry and good luck

The shock mounts look ok. I can't see any deformation in the mounting points. The passenger side shock doesn't look straight up and down and the swaybar is fucked up pretty bad.

The watts linkage is what locates the axle side to side. If you will doing the repair yourself I would remove the damaged sway bar and the watts linkage and check the watts linkage mounting points closely for damage and then see if the axle housing will line up correctly. As long as the 4 links pieces are straight they should be ok. The FSM has body demensions you may be able to use to make sure everything is lining up. If you are lucky you may be able to just replace the axle, watts linkage pieces and the sway bar, or you can even leave the sway bar off, a lot of people prefer the way the car handles without it. If the axle housing doesent want to line up with the watts linkage removed then I would seek the assistance of a professional body shop. If it does line up you should be able to get the pieces you need fairly easily off the classified section. Forum members can be quite helpful in cases like this.

Good luck

Time to become an only child.

Your best bet is to get it up on a lift. You will see a lot more than you would ever be able to see with it on jack stands.

I guess this will serve as my official introduction post, albeit not under the best circumstances.

First off, I am the aforementioned brother who crashed the GSL-SE. It was a stupid moment and I'm doing my best to make the situation right. I was taking a left too quickly and the rear end came out. I corrected but the snap oversteer got me and I collided with a curb. Left front hit first, then the rear. I ended up on top of the curb after I stopped. I did say how fast I was going because I wasn't sure. I wasn't looking at the speedometer when I was trying to correct. I can't imagine I was going more than 25-30mph when I hit the curb, but even then its a total guess.

I feel sick about it. More sick than I could ever feel if I had done it to my own car. I am just a big of a car nut as my brother so I know how this must be tearing him up. To know am the reason for that really makes me sick. I deserve all the flack I get in this thread (well all but maybe off-ing me).

I'm taking action on getting this fixed. I'm well versed with cars and have told my brother not to worry about a thing. I'm going to take care of it all, with his approval of course.

I figure this may be as good a place as ever to post progress on getting things straightened out and asking for help/posting pictures of damage, parts etc.

At this point I'd like to post some observations of damage/car behavior.

After I was on the curb I drove over to a nearby parking lot to survey damage. There wasn't anything blatantly obvious broken or bent from peering under the car. Only obvious signs of damage were the two left side wheels. Front isn't so bad but the rear had some obvious lip damage. None of the damage was severe enough to knock the tire off the rim. In fact tires are still holding air pressure.

I didn't see anything catastrophic enough to prohibit me from trying to drive it. So I took it down the street to see how it drove. It drove fine with the exception of a slight pull to the left. No vibrations, no clunking or other out of the ordinary sounds. The only thing I was worried about was maybe losing the rear tire.

Yesterday afternoon I took the rear wheel off to see if I could find any obvious damage in the rear. All the links looked straight. Right side shock looked to be leaning slightly to the right as opposed to the left which appeared more straight like my brother mentioned. Only thing I noticed was that the sway bar looked bent, oddly enough. It has banana-ed in the area that is perpendicular to the rear end on the opposite side from the impact. It's straight on the impacted side. That seems really odd to me considering that the sway bar is spring steel and it's bushing mounted to the frame. My thought is that the bracket on the frame would have twisted or the bolt would have torn out before the sway bar would ever yield. What do you think? I'll try and get some pictures up.

I also drove behind my brother to see how it tracked. Like he said it crabbed slightly to the left. I'm not convinced it's noticeable though unless you are really looking for it. The only other thing I've noticed is that the impacted rear wheel has a wobble to it. I bet the axle is bend at the hub.

So I suppose that brings me to my first question. Being that this is GSL-SE, coming across a replacement axle is a little difficult. I could buy a set of custom made ones from RE-Speed but I think I'd prefer to source a good original one first. All the vendors I've talked to thought I'd have the best luck checking with the forums. Does anyone have one they'd sell? Also, would I be better off replacing the entire rear?

I'm going to check out some gently used GSL-SE stock wheels with tires tomorrow. The guy is selling them for $75/piece. Good price?

I'd like to take off the bent ones and put those on for the time being and then remove the swaybar. I have access to a couple of lifts so then I'd like to put it up on that to measure the suspension points and also get a closer look of any damage.

I haven't had chance to get a good look at the front yet but I plan to at least jack up the front tomorrow and get the wheel off. I think replacing the lower control arm would be a good safe bet considering it's just a stamped steel piece.

I really appreciate any help you all can provide but understand any bashing.

Thanks.

I feel your pain. I think I would start watching Ebay and buy him another SE. better than the broken one. That's what I would do. But that's just me.

Good to hear you are trying to make it right,
and the sway bar is probably not damaged, the right and left sides look completely different (with a bow on the passenger side) , so it may be fine. Maybe all that is needed is the axle, and then IF the crab is not obvious then I would put it on a 4 wheel alignment machine, that will tell you once and for all if the rear is straight and if anything is damaged on the front as well.

Good on you for trying to make it right; maybe he won't need to disown you after all.

Hopefully, lesson learned about trying to be Ricky Ricer with a borrowed car you're not familiar with.

Some things to check:

The center pivot shaft for the Watts link bellcrank (center of rear axle) is a notorious weak point on first gens; if it's bent, or sheared, it could explain your crab. Might not be obvious at first glance since the links will hold it more or less in place when the car's sitting level.

The axle is easy enough to check; pull the rear wheel & brake assembly, mount a dial indicator to the brake mounting flange with the tip touching the axle face, and rotate the axle by hand. Run-out specs are in the FSM, as is allowed end-play.

Unlike modern cars, there's no real alignment adjustments on the first-gen rear. Stuff's either straight, or bent, or broke.

Good luck; all ribbing aside, it's lucky that things didn't end up worse.

Lol I'm finally just coming to terms with the whole straight, bent, or broke thing. Kinda making me debate on camber plates. Guy at the auto shop told me that alignment doesn't cover camber on my car since it doesn't have slides for it... he said I need to rotate my strut mount... lol wut?

This happened to my old 7 before I bought it, I bought it from a friend and his brother did a similar thing but much worse. The damage is probably the same or similar.

-bent a-arm in front
-bent lower control arm in rear
-bent axle
-2 bent wheels
-bent brake caliper braket in rear

The rear axle housing looked fine but it was tweeked just enough that it would burn through bearings every year or so.

I would recommend replacing the entire rear end, both control arms on damaged side in rear, the front a arm, front strut assembly with spindle, and both wheels that hit.

Thanks for the feedback so far. I was thumbing (well on the computer anyway) through the FSM last night trying to find frame measurements but came up empty. Is there a diagram with dimensions in it? What section?

I'm also looking at a couple of wheels with tires tonight. $75 a piece for stock GSL-SE wheels sound about right? I saw in the classifieds people are generally asking $25-$40 without tires I presume.

I'll try and get some pictures up tonight too.

it really depends on the shape the wheels are in. It that look to be in really good shape with the clear still on them than $75 is probably right.

The top strut plates can be rotated to mount in one of four different positions, called A, B, C, & D, based on which side faces forward.

Changing this makes about a 1.5-degree change to caster, camber, or both. If you look at the rubber part of the top of the mount, you'll see there's a little triangular index arrow to help you keep track.

Camber plates give you a lot more range, but you end up having to cut your strut towers to use them, and for some builds/years you have to modify your strut tops.

You can also buy adjustible lower arms from Racing Beat / Mazdatrix. Not cheap, but camber adjustment up the wazoo and no cutting required. Meant more for part- or full-time track cars, though.

Definitely in there - - Last sheet in the "body" section, if I recall correctly. Key hole-hole dimensions as well as a side elevation.

No cutting required for camber plate installation DD. :) The top of the strut can be an issue, with two different bearing sizes, but not too tough to figure out what you need... I ground a set down to fit, then a couple years later replaced them with the "race" Illuminas, which come with the correctly sized shaft.

On the stock strut mounts, point the arrow inward and backward gives maximum camber.

Also, in case he missed this info above, the rear swaybar is not symetrical. Probably no damage there...

Truly? Sounds like my major objection to camber plates just evaporated!

Oh wow, I totally thought that guy was full of it. So which way does each possible direction achieve? Looking at mine as if sitting in the passenger seat the arrow is pointing down and left. Camber is -0.2* and caster is 5* so which way should I turn it? Will this change when I put my new Tokicos on with the re-speed coilover kit? Guess I'm going way off topic on this one lol sorry bout that.

Well I guess I may as well as throw out the idea of if that lsd in your SE fits the rear axle on an 83 gs and you replace the whole rear end then I might be down to buy the lsd to help you displace some costs, but I think the axle is a different size. Someone prove me wrong.

Well it took my entire evening just to go get the wheels + tires so I didn't get to look at the car again. Now with these short days I only have about 2 hours of light after work. Kinda sucks.

Today should be clear though and I will actually have some pictures.

I got 2 wheels + tires for $120. They were about the same condition as the good wheels on the car so not so bad. I really wanted to get them for $100 but seller wouldn't go that low.

Gratz. Have you gotten around to checking that watts link yet? I know you said they look straight but nothing like a nice clean straight edge to verify