Please Help? Don't want to spend any more unnecessary money!

[wheelhaus]

I also agree that you should take to to an auto body shop or a garage that is more familiar with the car and/or doing crash repair. I suspect something is still screwy with the suspension/steering geometry.

Nearly the exact same thing happened to my wife in her 05 WRX, which has the same style "banana" lower control arm, just mounted backwards compared to the BRZ. Anyways, it was buckled from a small sliding impact with a curb similar to yours. We replaced the LCA and had an alignment, later found the bearing was trashed and had it replaced with the knuckle.

ANyways, I'd suspect the lower control arm is bent or it's mounting points on the chassis are tweaked. This could cause the wheel to sit incorrectly within the intended geometry and it could be carrying more/less weight than it should, causing it to feel strange.

A quick measurement could check if the LCA is appreciably tweaked, even if it doesn't appear to be: Point the front wheels dead forward and measure the gap between the rim and fender at 9, 12, and 3 o'clock around it's diameter. If the measurements aren't very, very close or identical between left/right wheels, you may have found it.

You could also jack the front of the car to unload the wheels, and have a friend hold the steering wheel straight while you grab each front wheel at opposite sides (12 and 6, or 9 and 3) and rock it back and forth to feel if there's any strange wobble or play.

[Khwang89]

Originally Posted by wheelhaus

I also agree that you should take to to an auto body shop or a garage that is more familiar with the car and/or doing crash repair. I suspect something is still screwy with the suspension/steering geometry.

Thanks. I've decided that I am going to go back to the original dealership to demand free labor or at least heavily discounted seeing as it's ridiculous to have taken this many tries to get it right. If they cannot meet my demands, I have already consulted a collision center specializing in car mechanics.

[ROCKETS86]

when you got it alligned did you have issues with camber. As the front end does not have caaber bolts there is no adjustments. Having positive or negative caber will cause the car to dart around and "follow" road gradient. For example I have adjustable coilovers in my car and I have 2.5 deg negative camber in the front for the track days and my car darts all over. So just check to make sure your wheels arent cambered as it could be that simple.....the dealership wont be able to fix it unless they install camber bolts or replace any bent parts...which by the sounds of things havent done either of those.

[Deadspool]

We have front axles now?

must have been a tsb I missed..

[d1ck]

Do you have your alignment printouts? Normally they will have lots of other info on them (besides toe, camber and caster). Check them. Also, I'm going to say that the most likely culprit would be the LCA, knuckle, or subframe.

[dave77]

If you've gone to the dealership 3 times to fix the same problem I think they makes you able to get warranty coverage of some sort. You should try that route, even though it's not necessarily a warranty issue, I think you still get covered from unnecessary and repeated trips to the dealer.

At least that's how I would see it, and make the argument. I'd talk to the manager and say "hey I came to get this fixed 3 times and it's not fixed. I've paid the money to get it fixed and therefore I need the result that I paid for."