kartrcr4life

I need help in making sense of this or at least decide what I should do. Not too long ago, I hit a curb and went up a side walk making a right turn. Curb was about 6 inches high. I hit it at about 20-25mph. The part that took the most damage was the front right side wheel since it hit the curb first. There wasn't much damage to the car aside from the front right wheel and tire. The wheel itself is fine and didn't get bent. Right after the incident, I drove home but noticed the steering wheel wasn't aligned. A few days later, I went to a Sears Auto center that was recommended by several local owners. They did the alignment and everything lined up except for caster. The tech said that he couldn't get more that 5.0 degrees of caster on the left side. I asked if anything got bent and he said he inspected everything and he didn't find any bent suspension components. Right now, caster is set at L5.0, R5.2 with everything else set to factory specs. Driving the car, everything feels normal and car tracks straight and steering wheel is centered.

Question is, should I be bothered that he couldn't get more than 5 degrees on the left side? If something got bent, why would it be on the left side considering that most of the force of the impact was on the right? If something is bent, why would it only affect caster and not camber and\or toe?

My options are: A) Since caster doesn't affect tire wear and the car drives fine, I'll just leave it be and move on B) Take it to a Honda dealer and pay for another alignment C) Take it to another third party shop to do another alignment

I really need help in figuring this out, it's been gnawing at me for sometime now. Thanks in advance!

Slows2k

I've found that most S2k's are low enough that the bumper blocks the transverse beam on most alignment heads. In order to let the heads "see" each other you have to tilt the heads out of level to clear the bumper. removing a bumper to do an alignment isn't what most what to do. Tilting the heads throws off the caster reading as well.

INTJ

I find it very hard to believe that there is not more significant damage, like the classic bent lower control arm, from a hit at those speeds. Did you have a caster reading from a service before the hit?

kartrcr4life

I did, before alignment and after the incident, the driver side caster was at 3.8 and the passenger side was at 5.7. Also, camber and toe were all out of spec for all four corners. After alignment, everything was put back to spec except for caster. If it were the LCA on the driver side, wouldn't that also affect camber and toe?

aLcm

its your lower control arm.

same thing happened to me. did the fix myself only cost me 60 bucks and i aligned it myself.

gl dude

kartrcr4life

Where did you get the LCA for $60? Ebay? Also, is there a way to measure the LCA to know that it is bent?

FF2Skip

The only way I was able to tell mine was bent was to mate it to a new one for the opposite side. And yes, I had both upper and lower bent control arms. They were the cause of much alignment frustration. Yours shouldn't be this bent.