hit a curb
 

So I hit a curb in my FC last nite. Got too sideways on a right turn, over counter-steered and my left front wheel hit and went over the curb. Drove it home, no problem, barely any visual damage. The rim got bent pretty bad to where i shouldnt use it but I have other rims so swapped the two fronts. After taking off the wheel, I cant see any visual damage. I checked to see if anything looked bent, my control arm, sway bar, sway bar links and strut all seemed to look stait with my eyes.

The result: To drive strait I would have to hold my steering wheel a little to the left. After seeing that nothing looked bent, I was hoping that I just threw off my allignment. So I went and payed for an allignment, which did help. My steering wheel is now pretty strait. Prior to this accident, I had my allignment done like a month ago from the same people so I still had my specs. After todays allignment I noticed that my caster was out of allignment by like 3 degrees. I know that there isnt any way to adjust caster, but my caster before the accident was better than it is now, This makes me belive that I certainly bent something. My caster on the front left is 3.6 and the caster on the right is 5.3 How bad is this?

Heres my specs a month before hitting the curb
 

here are my specs now
 

as you can see my old caster was 4.9 on the left and 5.3 on the right which was better than it is now.

If you have lost caster its possible the control arm or mount is knocked slightly rearwards. The PO of my vert I suspect did the same thing as before there was a slight difference in l -> r wheel base. The horseshoe that holds the rear section of the front control arm on my was bent significantly inward. effectively making the balljoint go from point at 3 o clock(pass side btw) to what would be 3:30. Not a whole lot but enough to make a difference.

How bad is it to drive with my caster like this? Will it affect my driving?

So they also didn't adjust your camber? WTF? That's adjustable, no?

camber/caster are only adjustable to a small degree by unmounting the strut from the chassis and twisting the strut top 90-180 degrees and remounting it.

i doubt the lower control arm bent as it is aluminum and usually will break before bending, the subframe could have gotten tweaked but that would affect camber more than caster. my suspicion is your strut is bent.

Thank you once again Karack, I think your might be right. Thats definately possible. That would be the worst situation tho, tokico illumina. :( Its alright, thats what I get for driving stupid. Is their any way to confirm that its bent without just looking at it? I wish it was just my control arm or sub frame because I got another 7 in my driveway, same year, strait body, that I can swap parts from.

after working on car alignments for several years, short answer is no. there is no easy way to tell if the strut is bent unless you take the time to disassemble it yourself and inspect everything with a straight edge.

Alright thanks for your help. One more thing, How bad is it for me to drive with it like this? Should I not corner hard anymore? Should I be able to feel a difference with my caster offset? Those are my last questions, thanks man.

looking at your alignment specs, youre fine to drive. caster does nothing to your tires, as its not a live angle. your ackerman angle may be off, but if you just dont drive it hard, you wont notice a difference. also, you might possibly see a bit of your steering return off as well, but i highly doubt that.
honestly, its not that big of a deal. just be grateful you got away without bending or braking anything

Lloyd

yep, caster's only real job on a car is to center the wheel after a turn and helps get rid of some of that pull from road crown(peak at the center of the road causes cars to naturally have a pull, roads have a peak at the middle so that water washes off the roadway versus pool up and cause hydroplaning).

casters real job is to stabilize the vehicle at higher speeds. hence why you see some sports cars (ie corvette z06@ ~8 degrees of caster) with higher caster angles.
like we said, dont trip

Lloyd

I'm experienced with the Hunter machines used in your alignments...

I concur with the guys above. It'll only affect the steering wheel self centering and stability at high speeds.

Take some time to analyze the strut. You may be able to straighten parts of it with a hammer. It's most likely bent at the ears where the knuckle attaches...