I had a collision with another car yesterday. The other car hit me on the front passenger side corner.
There's some damage to the plastics, but the main problem is that the wheel is badly misaligned. I did manage to limp home after carefully checking the ball joints, tie rod etc.
I took both front wheels off today to see what I could see. It's very difficult to take measurements because there aren't many good reference points to base them off, and a lot of the parts are curved.
Since the wheel has negative camber (pushed in at the top) my amateur guess is that the most likely culprits are the upper control arm or the steering knuckle. It does kind of look like the steering knuckle is leaning forward slightly, though with no frame of reference, it's difficult to tell.
The upright part of the knuckle where it joins the upper control arm does have an area of scale or rust that has flaked off, which I guess might be the result of it bending, but I can't be sure of this.
The upper control arm doesn't look bent, but I know that even slight bends to this part can have a dramatic effect. The tie rod does not look bent, but even if it was, I would have expected that to cause toe-in, not toe-out.
I measured the distance from each tie rod to a point on the frame, and with the steering wheel centered, they are the same length.
The steering wheel appears to still be aligned with the driver's side wheel, ie when I have the steering wheel centered, the driver's side hub is pointing straight forward.
I did have to steer to the left in order to go straight as I was limping home, but I think I was just correcting for the excessive toe-out of the passenger wheel.
Looking under the hood, I don't see any visible issues with the area where the upper tie rod attaches.
Looking at the geometry of the steering components, I don't think it could be the lower control arm, because while that could cause the toe-out, I don't think it could cause the negative camber. I'm not sure about this though, because like I said, I'm a total amateur taking guesses.
I guess I'm out of ideas. This is my only vehicle, and I don't have a lot of money to get it fixed. I'm contemplating whether I should start throwing parts at it to see if that corrects the main problem, then I'll only need to pay for an alignment.
The danger with that approach is that I may be wasting money if it turns out the frame itself is bent.
I know it's a long shot, but I know there are people here who spend a lot of time working on these things, so maybe someone can spot something obvious that I missed.
I took a photo of both sides, and then I flipped the photo of the driver's (good) side to make it easier to compare. The steering knuckle does look as if it is slightly rotated clockwise (it looks like this in real life too) and there is that area of flaked scale/rust that may or may not be significant.
If there are any measurements or photos I can take that might help, let me know.
There's some damage to the plastics, but the main problem is that the wheel is badly misaligned. I did manage to limp home after carefully checking the ball joints, tie rod etc.
I took both front wheels off today to see what I could see. It's very difficult to take measurements because there aren't many good reference points to base them off, and a lot of the parts are curved.
Since the wheel has negative camber (pushed in at the top) my amateur guess is that the most likely culprits are the upper control arm or the steering knuckle. It does kind of look like the steering knuckle is leaning forward slightly, though with no frame of reference, it's difficult to tell.
The upright part of the knuckle where it joins the upper control arm does have an area of scale or rust that has flaked off, which I guess might be the result of it bending, but I can't be sure of this.
The upper control arm doesn't look bent, but I know that even slight bends to this part can have a dramatic effect. The tie rod does not look bent, but even if it was, I would have expected that to cause toe-in, not toe-out.
I measured the distance from each tie rod to a point on the frame, and with the steering wheel centered, they are the same length.
The steering wheel appears to still be aligned with the driver's side wheel, ie when I have the steering wheel centered, the driver's side hub is pointing straight forward.
I did have to steer to the left in order to go straight as I was limping home, but I think I was just correcting for the excessive toe-out of the passenger wheel.
Looking under the hood, I don't see any visible issues with the area where the upper tie rod attaches.
Looking at the geometry of the steering components, I don't think it could be the lower control arm, because while that could cause the toe-out, I don't think it could cause the negative camber. I'm not sure about this though, because like I said, I'm a total amateur taking guesses.
I guess I'm out of ideas. This is my only vehicle, and I don't have a lot of money to get it fixed. I'm contemplating whether I should start throwing parts at it to see if that corrects the main problem, then I'll only need to pay for an alignment.
The danger with that approach is that I may be wasting money if it turns out the frame itself is bent.
I know it's a long shot, but I know there are people here who spend a lot of time working on these things, so maybe someone can spot something obvious that I missed.
I took a photo of both sides, and then I flipped the photo of the driver's (good) side to make it easier to compare. The steering knuckle does look as if it is slightly rotated clockwise (it looks like this in real life too) and there is that area of flaked scale/rust that may or may not be significant.
If there are any measurements or photos I can take that might help, let me know.