Rear end sway

05Rex

05Rex

New member
Ok so I was being a bit of an *$$ and playing in the snow, we have all done it, well most of us probably. I came around a right hand corner, and my rear end slid around a lot faster than I expected and I clipped the curb pretty hard on the driver side rear tire. I was like 100ft from my house so I pulled into my driveway got out and looked and as expected I curbed my rim up pretty good.

The problem is I got up this morning and went to drive to work and my rear end is all over the place. The roads are crappy and my tires aren't all that great but this is way beyond normal. I got out to the main road where there was a bit more bare tar. I was going down the road at max 40mph and was chasing the rear end all over the place. I drove back home and that is where I sit wonder what the Hell I did.

I have read a few things and these are the possibilities that I have found:

Rear sway bar or broken linkage.

Bent Rim (even though it doesn't look bent)

Broken shock (doesn't seem likely but I am a novice)

Anyone have any ideas? Just trying to prepare myself for what I have to look forward to.

Thanks in advance.

 
Call Meyagi, he's been dealing with a bunch of meathead-style "drifting" accidents these past few days...

You F'd up your rear camber, @ the very least you'll be aligning the car.

WRX' kinda' SUCK at snow drifting,

mine's not good, imo.

It's chronic lack of DCCD = Fail in many cases.

 
Ha same thing happened to me last year. But I was lucky, its hard to describe but the plate that was used to adjust the camber became pushed under the piece of metal on the control arm where its suppose to be flush. Long story short ,they hammered it out and and re adjusted the camber. FYI it wasnt from being stupid with the car, PA doesn't do well in plowing their roads and you dont see the curbs!!!!!!

But in that situation DCCD would haven't mattered, its just a case of being over zealous with the throttle.
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Alright, so I brought my car to a local mechanic to get it checked out and man what a ride that was!!! It was about 10 miles away and I never went above 30mph and had all I could to keep it on the road! Felt like I had 2 flat rear tires on ice, talk about white knuckling it.

So the Mechanic put it up on the lift, looked over the rear end and nothing was bent or broken, he measured everything and it all matched up. So he took it out for a test drive and said he damn near wrecked my car it was so bad.

He brought it over to a place to have a 4 wheel alignment done and he said the rear wheels were toed in. Just a question that maybe someone with experience can answer, I slid into the curb which is about 6 inches tall max, wouldn’t that knock the camber off and not the toe and why would it effect both wheels?

So he did a 4 wheel alignment with a hunter machine and got all 4 wheels aligned but now the steering wheel is off by about 5 degrees to the left. The guy that did the alignment said that whenever he put the steering wheel to center it was un-drivable. Granted they were both pressed for time as they had other jobs lined up and fit my car in last minute as a favor to get it fixed asap, but they can’t figure out what is causing this situation.

I have driven it since then and on bare tar it drives straight as can be, aside from the steering wheel being off, but on other then clean road it is still a little squirrelly, not nearly as bad as it was and I do still have worn summer tires on it, winter tires are on their way, had to wait for Christmas present cash to arrive.

As always any ideas or incite would be much appreciated, I would like to be able to point my mechanic in the right direction via experienced incite so it might take him less time and cost me less money and in the long run create less headache for everyone. If you think I should bring it to a specialized Subaru mechanic a pay a bit more I will but I am thinking suspension and alignment stuff is basic enough for a local mechanic to take car or to save me the money and hassle.

I know this is a long post and I apologize I just wanted to supply as much info as possible to get the most informed answer possible.

 
1) you counter-steered too late (and probly lifted off throttle @ wrong time too) in original incident and whacked a curb pretty hard. this is otherwise known as "bending stuff"

2) the guys who did your repairs and alignment did a half-assed job, take car back and make them do it right. probly will mean making appointment and leaving it off so they are not rushed for time

3) get them snow tahrs on there, with crapy summer tires on you're just gonna whack another curb and start this silliness all over again

 
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stiXXX said:
Call Meyagi, he's been dealing with a bunch of meathead-style "drifting" accidents these past few days...

You F'd up your rear camber, @ the very least you'll be aligning the car.

WRX' kinda' SUCK at snow drifting,

mine's not good, imo.

It's chronic lack of DCCD = Fail in many cases.
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Isn't that kind of like me saying my Airplane kind of sucks at landing??
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Usually its the driver not necessarily the machine. I pooched the rear end of my RS in a snowy parking lot because I LOVEed up, not because my car sucked at snow drifting.

Bending a car is good Sam, otherwise you may start to care about it too much.

 
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Yeah the fault totally lies with me and my “meathead-style” driving, I was playing when I shouldn’t have been with tires that should have been swapped out months ago. Mistakes are made and learned from and until they get that quantum physics thing figured out I won’t be able to go back in time and change it and even if I did I wouldn’t learn anything from my mistake and more than likely be doomed to repeat it.

But I digress, what I was really looking for was a good place for my mechanic to start looking so I don’t have to pay for another hours worth of his time to try to find where the problem lies before taking the steps to resolve it. As I said before, the mechanic did me a favor and squeezed my car into his schedule to try to get it fixed so I could get to work and make the money to pay for my idiocy. My mechanic didn’t really have the proper time to find what is really causing the issue. I don’t want to blame him, seeing how he did me a favor in getting it in the shop as quick as he did. I have already scheduled to have it brought back to him to resolve the issue when he has more time next week.

As far as the tires go, money is tight and I have been doing my best to get by with what I have. Again fault lies with me for cutting corners where I should not have but the tires are purchased and on their way and will be mounted and on my car the day I get them, believe you me.

I don’t know how general of a question this is as I am not a mechanic and have a limited understanding of the complex suspension system in these cars but if someone can lend any help in pointing my mechanic in the right direction with the information I have given I would be extremely grateful! I understand if this is not possible because there is not enough information or there are too many possibilities but I just figured it never hurts to ask especially seeing how there is such a wealth of knowledge within the members of this forum.

As far as caring to much about my car, it is just a car, but is also my means of transportation getting back and forth to work to make the money to feed my family so I need to get my head out of my arse and stop driving like a 16 year old kid with no responsibilities.

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE driving that car and every time I have to drive another vehicle it reminds me of how much I LOVE driving that car but part of driving a car with that much HP is respecting it and not driving like an asshat and putting myself and others at risk. I am only human though and make mistakes that remind me of these important facts, and this was just one of those mistakes and I consider myself lucky that it didn’t cost me more than it has.

 
suspension parts on the Impreza are designed so that in an impact they bend instead of breaking or damaging the hard mounting points on the body.

given your description of the incident, look for bent rear control arms or bent rear trailing arms. it's unlikely the strut itself is bent, but it could be.

unfortunately I have a fair bit of experience diagnosing and repairing the aftermath of rear-end hits to Subarus
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05Rex said:
Yeah the fault totally lies with me and my “meathead-style” driving, I was playing when I shouldn’t have been with tires that should have been swapped out months ago. Mistakes are made and learned from and until they get that quantum physics thing figured out I won’t be able to go back in time and change it and even if I did I wouldn’t learn anything from my mistake and more than likely be doomed to repeat it.

But I digress, what I was really looking for was a good place for my mechanic to start looking so I don’t have to pay for another hours worth of his time to try to find where the problem lies before taking the steps to resolve it. As I said before, the mechanic did me a favor and squeezed my car into his schedule to try to get it fixed so I could get to work and make the money to pay for my idiocy. My mechanic didn’t really have the proper time to find what is really causing the issue. I don’t want to blame him, seeing how he did me a favor in getting it in the shop as quick as he did. I have already scheduled to have it brought back to him to resolve the issue when he has more time next week.

As far as the tires go, money is tight and I have been doing my best to get by with what I have. Again fault lies with me for cutting corners where I should not have but the tires are purchased and on their way and will be mounted and on my car the day I get them, believe you me.

I don’t know how general of a question this is as I am not a mechanic and have a limited understanding of the complex suspension system in these cars but if someone can lend any help in pointing my mechanic in the right direction with the information I have given I would be extremely grateful! I understand if this is not possible because there is not enough information or there are too many possibilities but I just figured it never hurts to ask especially seeing how there is such a wealth of knowledge within the members of this forum.

As far as caring to much about my car, it is just a car, but is also my means of transportation getting back and forth to work to make the money to feed my family so I need to get my head out of my arse and stop driving like a 16 year old kid with no responsibilities.

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE driving that car and every time I have to drive another vehicle it reminds me of how much I LOVE driving that car but part of driving a car with that much HP is respecting it and not driving like an asshat and putting myself and others at risk. I am only human though and make mistakes that remind me of these important facts, and this was just one of those mistakes and I consider myself lucky that it didn’t cost me more than it has.
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Craigslist for snows my friend.

 
Nigel Prodrive said:
suspension parts on the Impreza are designed so that in an impact they bend instead of breaking or damaging the hard mounting points on the body.

given your description of the incident, look for bent rear control arms or bent rear trailing arms. it's unlikely the strut itself is bent, but it could be.

unfortunately I have a fair bit of experience diagnosing and repairing the aftermath of rear-end hits to Subarus
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Thanks for the advice Nigel, I will have him check this out, I thought he said he already did but maybe he wasn't paying close enough attention and missed something.

I took a closer look myself yesterday and it is pretty obvious that the wheel I hit is still toed out pretty bad, bad enough so I can see it with my naked eye.

As far as the snow tires, thanks for the advice HR and will look into that next time but I already bought them through TireRack. I noticed that they are one of the vendors that sponsor the forum, is there anything I should do to link the sale to the forum so they can get credit for the sale or something. Not sure if it matters, just figure they would be more apt to continue sponsoring the site if they knew they were getting sales from it.

 
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