N15 front wheels pushed back

[Pnut]

Long story short my son jumped a curb in his Pulsar pretty hard, popped the front tires and dented the rims. We have put on new rims and tires, visually the suspension arms and bushes dont look bent or damaged, however the wheels are sitting quite far back in the wheel arch and they look to me to have a quite a lot more of negative camber than usual. Does anyone know what might be causing this? Could the whole front subframe have moved back somehow?

[sss4me]

lower control arms bent. tie rods bent.strut tops busted. limp it to a suspension shop for a look see.

[Pnut]

Does the subframe have bushes that could have torn or moved?

[sss4me]

it does, but there's not much to them at all. probs be structural damage

[Pnut]

Joy :/

How likely is it that the subframe itself is damaged, or just the control arms and tie rods?

Are there any documents with measurements i can do to see whats out of place? Like from a chassis point to the control arm connections and maybe ball joint or something like that?

[Cozzm0]

Jack the car up and look for paint cracking on the black painted metal suspension components.

[Pnut]

Jack the car up and look for paint cracking on the black painted metal suspension components.

I have looked and there isnt anything obvious like that, nothing looks bent or out of sorts. But i guess that doesnt mean it isnt, so im hoping someone can give me some places to measure to see what isnt right.

[Pnut]

I pulled the control arms off on the weekend and went to pickapart and compared them with a couple of cars there, as far as i can see there is near to no change in the control arms. I can see a little bit of pain crack on them where there has been some deflection during the impact but not enough to cause any significant permanent change. I have pulled one of the shocks off as well and cant see any real damage either, id rather not have to just randomly swap parts out if i dont need to trying to fix it :/

Someone else suggested to me that the front of these are a little soft, so it is possible the subframe holes have elongated? I cant see any marks where the bolt heads had moved so i dont think this is the case, but will confirm by pulling a couple of the bolts for a good look.

I did notice the centre bar the front and rear engine mounts sit on has had a whack and it is possible the engine is sitting differently, but given the CV joints are there to take up any differences in positions i doubt this will cause any of the effect im seeing.

Any other ideas?

[Fargoman]

Today I was working on an N14 subframe is pretty hefty.

I wouldn't expect there to be much chance it is bent and the LCA's aren't.

The mounting points for the subframe are 2 bolts and 4 built in tapered pins and if the wheels are back it would have distorted the floor and the inner wheel arches. Not really likely.

The struts wouldn't have any impact on wheel position (longitudinally) so I would discount them.

My take would be the control arms are bent. It may not look like much but even a few degrees of bend will become significant over the 350mm length of the arms.

I'd suggest another visit the the wrecker and take an arm off. I know a pain to do but it is the only way to really compare them.

If you're based in Sydney I have arms off the car you can compare with.

[Scalzo]

How do you tell for sure if the control arms are bent? Was this indeed the problem for you, Fargoman?

[Pnut]

It ended up fixing most of the issue on mine, along with a wheel alignment. The toe was about 2 degrees out, when that was adjusted back in it started looking a bit more normal again. The drivers side has always sat back a little compared to the passenger side on this one.

[Fargoman]

I didn't have any problems with the front of the car.

I was narrowing the subframe as it is now fitted into a Suzuki MightyBoy that we're putting an SR20DE into and the Engineer wanted the Nissan brakes fitted and this was the easy way to do it.