one more for the road-dinged up again!!

chalk another one up for the road. it just recently snowed, and the slippery road got me. anyway, i am coming home from the store, and i go to turn into my araprtment complex, and my car starts to slide. i turn the wheel in the direction of the slide, and when i thought i was good, i turned the wheel in the other direction. bad idea. anywaythe car continues to slide, and my front passenger wheel slams into the curb, and i do mean slammed. the rim itself needs to be replaced of course, but when i got to looking at the whole area, i noticed this:

if i stand in front of my car and line myself up with the driver side fender and wheel well, i can look straight down, and only see the tire when i get right to the ground. meaning the tire id flish with the wheel well. good

if i do the same thing on the passenger side, however, the wheel sticks out at least an inch all the way down. meaning it sticks outside of the wheel well. not good

i also noticed that when the car is sitting still and i have turned the steering wheel so that the tires are straight, the steering wheel itself is actually tilted to the left about a quarter of a turn.

in addition, i call myself driving around for a bit to see if anything was really wrong, and i could feel a weird vibration in the steering and from the passenger side. not good either.

so with that i have a few questions:

1. if my car slammed the curb on the passenger side, why does the wheel stick out on that side? i would think that if something were bent, that it would look recessed and not protruded.

2. whats the deal with the steering wheel? can i assume at a minimum that the align is shot? what else?

3. if something is bent or even broke behind the wheel, what are the parts called, and does anyone have pictures or know where i can get a visual of it.

if anyone has information, please help me out. this bad luck i've been having is starting to make me very irritable. this is one of those times where i really need you car gurus(pinoy, fish, manybrews, craig, rallifan, etc...)

this happened at night so the pics that i will put up arent that great
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/...f/fcba7f9e.jpg
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/...e/fcba7f98.jpg
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/...e/fcba7f96.jpg
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/...4/fcba7f94.jpg
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/...0/fcba7f92.jpg

it looks worse in person. i will see better in the daylight

Ouch I had a similar experience as you, but thankfully nowhere near as bad. If you go have your alignment checked, most likely you'll hear that your caster is out of spec. Since the Galant's caster is unadjustable, the body shop assumed that the frame was bent. To this day I haven't had to repair my damage because it's nowhere near as severe as yours. What I'm thinking about the protruding passenger wheel is maybe the bump pushed in your camber...I'm not sure what the term is (positive or negative) but now you might have had it involuntarily adjusted...but from the pics it looks like your entire wheel may have popped out of position so that might not be it. The shaky driving could be from the misalignment and need to rebalance the wheel, since now your passenger wheel rotates out of whack. I'm sure you've seen cars that had tires that looked like they were wobbling as they rotated. Hopefully nothing bad happened that can't be easily fixed. The steering parts illustration that you might be looking for can be found at http://www.parts.com Thanks for sticking my name in the car gurus section...now I can't fail https://www.thegalantcenter.org/styl...ault/laugh.gif

today, i took the car out for a test, and it pulls very hard to the right. in order to keep it in a straight line, i have to turn the steering wheel to the left. should i really be driving with it like this, and when i take it to get looked at, what should i tell the mechanic specifically

Tell 'em exactly what you told us...that you smacked into a curb insanely hard. Tell them what your symptoms are (or your cars symptoms rather). If I were you though I'd have that looked at as soon as you can. I think it's really stressful for a load bearing part of the car to be sitting damaged and driven damaged.

the car will sit for a week, while im in atl, so thats good. i'll take it to midas or meinke when i get back. thanks for the info. hope fully its not as bad as i feel it is

It seems like you live in an snowy area.......Why don't you use chains on your tires?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(NRG)</div><div class='quotemain'>It seems like you live in an snowy area.......Why don't you use chains on your tires?</div>im in chicago. its not that its always bad. its just that it was freshly packed down

same exact thing happen to me the other night cause of snow but luckily i got it to almost stop before it hit the curb nothings wrong with it

okay so now that im back in town, i call and take my car around to a couple of places to find out the problem with the car. turns out that the spindle is bent pretty good. i ask to get an estimate of cost, and two of the three places i went to tell me that it will cost about $375. one place told me $450. the prices include all the labor and an alignment, but damn thats steep. anyway, the car is at the shop and i feel like throwing up. like i have always told myself, if it wasnt for bad luck, i wouldnt have any. could be worse, but im still sick to my stomach. just needed to vent. with the way things are going already this year, i'm going to take a break for a while and get myself together. see you guys on the high ground!!

Your luck thats all its gonna cost bro. I did the same thing to my Cavalier last winter on the way to the airport and the damage came out to about $2 grand. My insurance had to cover it for me. My front tires did not line up, I felt the same vibration you are feeling and on top of that since one wheel would be facing worward while the other was slightly turned I lost a lot of traction. My car would just slide sideways sometimes and If I was at a stop light I would have to start off slow as hell or the wheels would just spin. I broke a lot of stuff when I hit the curb. Im sorry to hear that you ride is messed up but I hope its not as bad as mines was and I hop all you have to pay is $450 rather 2 grand. Good luck bro...cant wait to see you out rollin with us this summer!