Suspension/steering failures?

[wander2039]

After a small incident on Monday I'm curious to hear how many have a had a suspension/steering failure? I'll admit I rarely seen one but I don't drive much. Mine was on the 'stiva due to a stripped bolt. I went to back up and part of passenger side suspension let loose, the knuckle came off the ball joint. Managed to pull the axle apart and the bend the fender.. hard not to think about what would of happen if it came apart at 70mph the previous night with my boy in the back seat! Hope I never run into the guy I bought it from. Him and his son replaced the control arms before I bought it.

From looking you'd never know the bolt was loose amazing I've had it since November of last year. The only indication I had of something wrong was alot of torque steer which thought was the sway bar bushings still loose even though I just tightened it down a few days ago. Guess I'll have to stop thinking about the what-ifs. Myself I've replaced 6 of those arms and all are still on the road with no problems. I'm surprised with the sue happy society we have there's no safety mechanism in place.

 

[unixguru]

I had infamous Mercury Topaz '88. My CV shaft disintegrated on the freeway at 60mph. Fortunately, I was in the right lane and was able to pull off safely. But car handled like crazy. I have a bunch of other stories about this car like radiator simply exploding, water pump going out while driving, tire simply disintegrating at 10mpg, blue/white smoke out of tail pipe, transmission slipping and jacking, and etc. I got this car with 89k miles and all of the above (except tire) happened before 105k miles. Got rid of it at 122k miles...

 

[sciphi]

My old 99 Elantra blew an oil seal on a rear strut. It handled like a wallowing pig. Every little bump left that corner of the car pogo-sticking wildly. 2 days of delivering pizzas like that before getting new struts made me very glad for the new ones!

 

[The_Jeff]

I got a saturn with brand new lower ball joints and the castle nuts on the stud were about three whole turns too loose. Pretty sure not an issue of the taper wallowing out, cuz I tightened them and they were good after that. Sabotage? I hate to think.

Also it had a new, 200 mile old inspection sticker, and the wires were showing on the front tires. Someone swapped tires afterwards? I was thinking of narcing on the station but afraid the state police would confiscate the sticker as evidence.

My BIL blew a lower REAR ball joint on his 99 bonneville and the tire was jammed pretty fiercely. Yes they have ball joints in the rear

 

[rpn453]

In my university days late one night I was driving a couple of friends home from the bar in 'Fat Boy' when a tie-rod end loosened off and let go. Fat Boy was an '84 Citation my family had that received the nickname because my brother called it a "big, fat, Chevette" when my father brought it home. I was making a left turn at about 40 km/hr when there was a loud 'clunk' from the front end. It felt like something was dragging pretty badly after that so I pulled over. We got out and the right front wheel was almost completely sideways. It was pretty funny. One of my friends continued laughing about it for most of the walk home. I suppose it could have been bad if it happened during a hard corner at higher speed, but the wheel went 90 degrees so quickly that it didn't affect steering much. Fortunately, it was about as calm and safe as a major steering component failure could be.

It had actually 'clunked' a couple of times previously while cornering hard, so it wasn't without warning. I should have looked into it the first time I heard the noise, but I didn't know anything about cars because my father looked after them and we didn't communicate any more than necessary.