ya definitely get that taken cared of. there should be a drain in that area that's probably plugged. so the loose steering is only at high speeds? maybe you over inflated your tires? lol this is beginning to be really annoying. you've literally replace all the parts that have to do with pointing the nose of the car but it's still not right. idk how you measured the wheel base but is the whole left side of the car like that or just the front or rear?

 

The drain was fine, I pulled it out along with a couple other grommets and started stripping the paint away. Should have it all cleaned up, primed, and painted within the next couple days. Seems like every time I start to fix one problem I find a few more.

Yeah, the looseness isn't noticeable at lower speeds. At any speed it kinda does feel like the tires are over inflated, but I checked, and they're not. I'm guessing the excessively stiff ride is from the new coilovers or from the tires being low profile.

I'll make some more wheelbase measurements tomorrow, and see whether it's the front or back. Good thinking, Hiwords.

So any advice on what exactly needs to be done at the alignment shop?

 

get the car on a good alignment rack and have them measure the wheelbase, stagger, check for parallelism, 'dog tracking' etc.. They also need to check the front end throughly for deflection, inclination angle, etc.. You need a good shop for this - the standard '18 months of experience' aint gonna cut it.

 

take the car to an alignment place my car was rear ended and had the frame bent a bit no one could get the car aligned so i took it to the dealer and they nailed it not perfect but the car handles like it should steering wheel is slightly to the right but just a little

 

ya i think your frame is bent. with a slightly bent frame, you're car will pull to one side at high speeds and it feels like you have loose steering. the stiffness of the suspension is from the tires and your COs. like what midnight said, you'll need an experienced shop to fix this problem. one of my friends just bought a salvaged 06 g35 with a slightly bent front frame. he tied it to his house, tie his durango up to his rear end, and pulled with the power of the 2 cars lol. it solved his problem but it's still not perfect. idk how it drives because i've never driven it but he says it's fine in the city and a tiny bit shaky on the highway

 

take it to a body shop they can check if your car is bent my body shop unbent my frame for me

 

I measured the wheelbase in four different places today. I measured it like this on both sides of the car.

To the front left wheel is 50 17/32"
To the front right wheel is 50 1/32"
To the rear left wheel is 32 9/16"
To the rear right wheel is 32 9/16"
Both rear measurements are identical, which leads me to believe that the rear is fine. The front measurements are half an inch different from one another. This is strange because the left side of the frame was the part that was impacted from the collision and pushed in about half an inch to an inch, however the front left wheel was measured as being half an inch FORWARD of the front right wheel. I've measured it over and over again and can't make any sense of it. Does anyone have any theories as to what happened structurally to my car when it struck that guardrail two years ago?


I'm almost 100% certain the frame is bent. You can actually see that the left side of the front bumper is pushed in about half an inch. I'm thinking that it wouldn't be a bad idea to replace the front subframe too. It's starting to get rusty and I heard those bushings won't last much longer anyway. My car is approaching 136,000 miles. What do you guys think? The radiator core support needs to be removed in order to straighten the front part of the frame, right?

There are a couple of garages that aren't too far away that specialize in German cars. They claim to have very advanced equipment and decades of experience, including frame straightening and alignment. Problem is no one I know has heard of them, so I'd have to take their word for it. I don't live close to any cities, so I really don't have much to choose from, unless someone here can refer me to a good alignment shop that's within a few hours drive.

 

Um.. to measure wheelbase, measure the centerline of the axles (axle to axle) and not a body panel. You can do this by making sure the wheels are straight and using a plumb-bob to mark the ground (use chalk on asphalt). Then measure the marks front to rear and corner to corner.

 

hmmm, its kinda hard to **** up a bent frame again right?

 

I may do that too, to get an "official" wheelbase measurement. The thing is I already measured the distance between wheels and found the left side to be half an inch longer than the right. I wanted to find out whether it was the front or the rear of the car that was different, this was the only way I could think of doing this.