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Had a little accident on the weekend coming along West Coast Hwy... luckily i was at low speed and no one was hurt. And no i didn't hit anything... i was just driving.

If you have ever wondered what might happen if your lower ball joint sheared in half whilst driving... look at the pics below.

http://community.webshots.com/photo/525 ... 7469IjEIuP
http://community.webshots.com/photo/525 ... 7286HgRmyh
http://community.webshots.com/photo/525 ... 7604qMTmoL
http://community.webshots.com/photo/525 ... 7150kLRHWG
http://community.webshots.com/photo/525 ... 8007hBTgMs

From what i can tell i now have to replace on the passanger side...
Inner CV joint
Lower Ball Joint
Lower Control Arm
Radius Rod
Strut top
Brake lines
The fender apears repairable
And i think the heater hoses got damaged.. im leaking coolant from somewhere.

Hatchie will live again... SOON!!!

Dave

You were real lucky Dave, a nasty one, could have been a lot worse.
How would you know when it would it would ever go? Hopefully when you are not going fast.

Thats some scary stuff, glad to hear no one was hurt, was it showing any signs of being worn?

Jordan.

8O brown trousers after that? at least nobody injured........
sorry, but can't help thinking something about old cars and modern overpowered engines in em

yikes!! 8O 8O

hope you have it sorted soon....

so what do you think would have been the main contributer to such an accident?

Cripes 8O thats a lot o damage.

What's low speed? 70 60 40 20 km/hr?

I did hear the bad news mate - sorry i could not be more help.

As 4 the strut top was the restrictor any help? in minimising the damage or did the entire thing some away?

whyd you go and do that subarino???

it made bluesteel jealous and it tried the same trick

sheared the inner bolt off the lower control arm and everything bent back into the firewall and locked up the front left on the highway

cept mine was a little bit quicker... the usual 10%ish over 110

Cripes Johnnie, are you all right? 8O did it spin?

nah it just locked up the front and pulled pretty badly left, corrected by pullingon the wheel and seemed to have pretty good control over it... i would have expected stranger things than that from it
and had to let it roll to a stop to try and clear the merging lane, stopped a few meters shore... 4wd and off she went

had my sister bring me the spare soob and ill head back out later and replace the suspension on the side of the road

bluesteel wrote:had my sister bring me the spare soob and ill head back out later and replace the suspension on the side of the road

Johnnie you make me laugh cobber.
Bravo.
True BYB attitude.

In general this whole thread scares the brown out of me, I have just had the whole front end apart and replaced just about everything.

Mainly, I am glad you both are OK and the cars are not mortally wounded.

This is a bit of a wake up for some of us who are a little too used to digging through the nuts and bolts bucket for hardware when perhaps load bearing bolts should be replaced. I Just Have!

Dave- that must have been a prior impact, wear and tear!

I've had a wheel fall off when I merged onto the freeway one day. I think some little shit decided to loosen a few of the lug nuts when the car was at the railway station.

when we done this


offending rock in a mud hole = bent control arm + radius rod and a stuffed sunnie but at least we had a spare

we done a bush repare with limited tools we couldnt get the inner bolt back in (bent mount) so in true dodgy bush mechanic style we just stuck a steel tent peg in it and limped her home (160ks) took a while
but didnt even show signs of wear on the peg

nb the peg was made from some pretty solid steel not your average job that bends trying to push it into the ground.

I've had my entire steering rack come loose, only thing holding it on was the fluid lines (power steering).

Just entered a on ramp for the highway, half way through a corner at 90km I here a clunk and suddenly have 270 degree's of slack on the steering wheel and past that it just jumped to almost full lock.

Managed to keep it together and pull over then rumaged through my bag of spare parts found some bolts and bolted it all back on on the side of the highway.

That's the scariest thing I've had, but subarino and bluesteels efforts beat that hands down.

Jordan.

BaronVonChickenPants wrote: That's the scariest thing I've had, but subarino and bluesteels efforts beat that hands down.

I don't think so Baron! Subarino's happened at low speed, and while bluesteel's was scary I've had a similar thing happen at that sort of speed, resulting in the wheel locking up and funnily enough I did the 4wd thing to get myself out of the traffic...
But the whole steering rack falling out? That is worrying to say the least.

not meaning to start model wars here, but is this an MY specific thing?

i'd hate for that to happen to me, and i'd like to know what happened, so I (and im sure others) can take preventative actions against these sort of things from happening.

About to do the run down south on the weekend and was going to replace the passanger side ball joint when i got back until I read Daves post, as you can understand I took a sicky and replaced it yesterday. I can take fateful hint pretty seriously..

Kaffine

Well, the ball joint sheered. They aren't expensive, just replace them as a preventative measure. Might save your life.
Running larger wheels, going "extreme" Subaru offroading etc puts enough stress on all those components, and I'm about to go EJ20turbo......suffice to say I've already replaced most of my front-end parts with brand new ones.
I'm still abit scared though, at the end of the day it's still an L series - the damn thing will probably split down the middle after abit of my boost-junky driving!

AndrewT wrote: I'm still abit scared though, at the end of the day it's still an L series - the damn thing will probably split down the middle after abit of my boost-junky driving!

Ummmm then y do it!?!?!?

Glad your ok Dave, that could have turned nasty and caused a bad accident.
I lost the drivers side wheel in my Cooper S.
I was driving down the freeway southside heading for Perth when the wheel started to shake.
I headed for the Newcastle off ramp when i got to it doing about 70ks
when my front right wheel passed me doing 80 ks, hit the wall and went over, bounced off the road below then landed in the lake under the ramp.
Scary hey i have always checked my wheel nuts after that.
Cheers Pete