About a week ago, I had my whole front suspension changed. Both shocks, all tie rods, inner and outer, both upper control arms as well as the sway bar links. Now my car drives so bad. When trying to drive about 40mph my car almost loses control. Any time I hit a bump or if it's raining, it's almost impossible to drive due to the car pulling me all over the road. My steering wheel is off and to the left a little but I've driven with a bad alignment before and this is not the same. There is also a lot of vibration and it almost feels like my wheels are going to fall off. It seems like both my wheels are pulling away from each other. I was told that my sway bar was bent and needed to be replaced. From all I have read it seems impossible for the sway bar to actually bend. So any ideas?
3 Answers
The only way for a sway bar to bend would be an accident, so you are right to suspect they are full of it. It sounds like whoever did the suspension work botched the job and are now trying to cadge more money out of you to fix it.
Take it back and insist they fix it for zero cost, they made a mistake and they need to fix it. Stick to your guns. Bring large friends with tattoos for backup if you have to.
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Turns out I'm pretty sure it's a bad strut tower. Open my hood and the strut tower is really almost rusted thru and my strut mount bolts are moving slightly.
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Spare from obvious things like forgotten nuts that need tightening (these will usually make noises as well), the most probable cause for sympthoms like these is that the mechanic failed to adjust the front axle geometry.
The procedure is obligatory when the suspension is disassembled and reassembled.
It requires specialized and expensive equipment that most small workshops don't have.
My mechanic doesn't have it either, but when he does something related to the front suspension, he runs the car very carefully to a nearby workshop that does only axle geometry. After the proper angles between the front wheels are set, the steering wheel suddenly becomes "reasonable".
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