As the title really, bumped my near side front wheel on a kerb in the snow. Now the car is pulling to the right when the steering wheel is centred. It drives fine as far as I can tell but the steering wheel is just slightly off anticlockwise when driving in a straight line.

NS front wheel is not obviously bent/off camber/misaligned, just has a nice scratch in the alloy 👿

Any ideas what it’s likely to be? tracking issue or bent control arm? It’s a Mk2 Renault Clio.

Could be either of the two you’ve mentioned.

tracking issue or bent control arm?

pretty much

Could be tracking knocked out
Wishbones bent
Subframe bent
or something else

I did it to my old vovlo 440 and managed to bend the subframe, strut and wishbone. wheel was nearly under the car.

Guy at our work did exactly the same yesterday, hit a kerb in his wife’s car (ouch!).

It bent a steering arm or something, he drove it to a garage OK but the steering wheel was way off it’s proper orientation.

Cost him ~£100 and a whole load of apologising I’d imagine…

try hitting a off side curb a few times, that always fixes it for me.

😉

Track rod will probably be the weakest part. Can be replaced without the need to replace the rack. Tracking will need doing afterwards.

Almost certainly tracking. Unless you really clobbered it you will just have knocked the tracking out. Take it to a local garage (not a chain like Quickfit etc as they use semi trained gibbons) who have the proper kit to re-align it. Should cost about £20 IIRC. At the same time get them to check that the track rod is not bent and that everything else looks OK

Get yourself to your nearest tyre place. As soon as the wheels off/jacked up- you’ll be able to wiggle/feel around.

Get them to try resetting your tracking first along with checking the tyre wall for egg-cup bulges or other damage to the wall. Good luck.

i got away with this very luckily last year. very low speed but quite a whack. Nothing bent thankfully, but the tracking (rear near side wheel) was well out. nearly a year later and tyre wear is fine.

get it checked out up on a ramp – it’s the only way.

I bent the lower wishbone when I slid into a kerb a few years ago with my last car (Seat Ibiza) part was £35 + fitting IIRC

drove ok in the snow as there was less friction to pull the car to one side, took it to the garage in drier conditions, it was a pig to drive there even at a very slow pace

I’d be getting it checked out ASAP

As above, we used to have a 206 on which the tracking would go out if you so much as looked at a loose chipping!

About 4 sets of rod ends and most of the engine electrics later we sold it (about 18months!)

Tracking most likely, however it’s worth getting the camber checked too. I had recurrent tracking problems which turned out to be caused by the camber being out of alignment.

Don’t go to a well known high street chain of tyre fitters IMHO.

Thanks all, I’ll keep away from Kwikfit and ask around to see who’s good locally. It was only about 5mph so not a massive impact. Like I said nothing looks out of place, certainly not like Quirrel’s Volvo 😯

try hitting a off side curb a few times, that always fixes it for me.

This was actually my first thought, it wouldd be an excuse to have a play in the snow 😉

scrap it and buy a new one

My misses did that same thing in a Clio too. She protested that is was a “walking Speed” collision, yet managed to snap the wishbone bolts so the wheel just flapped around, knackered the wheel beyond repair and borked the tracking rods.

About £400 notes with of damage and I never even got a shag by way of an apology.

My Ibiza looked fine after it’s 5-10mph kerb incident too, still borked the lower wishbone, looks can be decieving

Most likely to be a bent track rod or wishbone (wishbone more likely as generally the steering shifts on impact whereas the chassis doesn’t). I do know multiple cases of people hitting kerbs at walking pace and bending wishbones. Wishbones and steering linkages are not meant to take loading in the direction a kerb provides it.

And the winner is……

Quirrel with

managed to bend the subframe, strut and wishbone

Buckled alloy and potential wheel bearing replacement too. Been quoted £315 just for the subframe by a Renault specialist (not dealer) so looking like an insurance job.

Be careful out there 😉

Buckled alloy and potential wheel bearing replacement too. Been quoted £315 just for the subframe by a Renault specialist (not dealer) so looking like an insurance job.

Do you really want to loose NCD and face higher premiums for years for a claim which will be probably less than a grand?

Can you claim for an accident a week or so after having it?

Buckled alloy and potential wheel bearing replacement too. Been quoted £315 just for the subframe by a Renault specialist (not dealer) so looking like an insurance job.

Be careful out there

Get down the scrappy and pick one up there. Where I got mine from all those moons ago.

i worked for a major car OEM factory as a chassis engineer for a few years.

Toe (‘tracking’) has very little if any effect on pull/drift. i know this for a fact, having done literally months of work on pull/drift. i tried top limit versus bottom limit versus out of spec both ends, and it didnt make any difference to the pull/drift at all.

Cars pull left or right for many reasons, the main ones being in order of likelihood:
1. tyre pressures – have to be equal for a ‘straight’ car. i have known some garages ‘fix’ cars by letting lots of air out of one tyre to help it steer straight. not good.
2. the tyre itself – the internal contruction of the tyre can make the car wander. swapping wheels left to right can help seomtimes
3. camber. these need to be equal and opposite, ie both negative 0.5. the car will pull to the side with the least negative camber
4. castor. needs to be equal
5. other seemingly random stuff in the suspension.

if the car was perfrect before then i would be checking:
1, 3 and 4.

if i had to guess i reckon you have bent a lower control arm.

edit add – i expect someone who really does know what they are talking about will come along soon and flame me….

I did this a few years ago and got the spirit level out. rolled back and forth in the garden a few times to straighten it all up as well as possible and checked the diffrence of camber by placing the level vertically from the edge of the wheel rim at the lowest point and had it resting on the arch at the top. i then measured the distance from the rim to the straight edge. did it both side and found it to be miles out. I jacked it upo,removed wheel and adjusted a few times until i got them both looking spot on. once the wheel was off it was visable where the strut position used to be so i moved it back to where it had been for the previous …7 years or so of its life and it drove straight with a nicely centred steering wheel.

ok it took 3 attempts of fine tweaking to get the steering wheel spot on but it cost nothing and took about 30 mins.

how hard do you have to hit a kerb to bend…. a strut?!

Toe (‘tracking’) has very little if any effect on pull/drift.

Yep but the OP said the car was pulling when the steering wheel was straight ahead. So it’s knocked something out of whack which means he has to turn the wheel to compensate and he is now going straight without drift necessarily but with the steering wheel not centred.

checked the diffrence of camber by placing the level vertically from the edge of the wheel rim at the lowest point and had it resting on the arch at the top.

That assumes the bodywork is the same on both sides.

i moved it back to where it had been

Nice and accurately of course..

Note to self – never buy a car from Martinxyz!

I hit a kerb doing an impromptu U turn to recover my stolen bike, what I had just seen some kid riding.
I bent the lower wishbone and it moved the left hand wheel back by an inch. Car steered perfectly except the wheel rubbed at certain angles of turn..

to recover my stolen bike

did you get the bike back?

Did the same last year and it cost me 250 up front for the repair, then the MOT showed up a leaky steering Rack – another 350 prolly as a result of the same crash 🙁

did you get the bike back?

Yes. a P7 pro about 6 months old. Foolishly left it in the back of my car overnight. By midday the next day once my car had been printed and found nothing and the insurance were talking about half the value I was irritated enough to go hunting, within 10 mins of leaving my house a I saw kid riding it. I did the ueey and drove at him, he gave up the bike quite willingly.

molgrips, the car has adjustable struts that were refitted once before so far out by the seat dealership that it pulled to the side and had a squint steering wheel after it went in for a new bearing/spring many years ago.

If i slide the strut back or forth to position it within millimetres of where it had been originally..and find it driving as well,if not better than it did. then thats good enough for me.If i returned it back to where it had been originally and it drove bad then i would have had to get things replaced or adjusted. (especially after the top dogs not being able to get it right)

“nice and accurately of course”

get over yourself.

porter_jamie – not disagreeing with your as I do ultimately agree with it being unlikely to be “just” toe adjustments, but I must say that previous cars I’ve had, after a change of track rod end and not carefully checking thread insertion depth, have been able to switch lanes in a matter of seconds with hands off the wheel. Most notably being my old pug 205. I suspect due to the effect the toe has on other suspension parameters. Take it to have its tracking changed, watch the chap simply adjust ONLY the tracking, and the car pulls straight and level again. Is it not just likely that the car you were working on is not particularly susceptible to it due to the sus geom, rather than cars in general not pulling due to toe issues?