rocky steering problem

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help please, any ideas. my daughter clobbered another car with her right front corner, the car came of worse, but when the repairs were all finished and she got it back, she commented to the repairers that the steering wheel was 180 degrees out, they checked the steering etc. couldnt find anything wrong and they took the steering wheel off and put it back in the correct position.

a week or two later my daughter found the steering pulled to the right very suddenly all on it's own !. and nearly caused another accident.

so this week the repair shop had it back and as far as i can tell it isnt good news. it was very nearly a write off with body damage she had to put right etc. so a steering box replacement or similar !!!!!!.

latest news is they say it is just wear and tear, and apparently they can adjust the wear and tear out for £100, which includes changing all the wheels from back to front and vice versa, i dont believe that will fix the problem though !!!!!!

any ideas anyone Unknw

please.

TOTAL BOLLOCKS !

It's not wear and tear. I've never known any steering component pull violently to the right unexpectedly in a million and some miles. (maybe when I had a flat tyre, but that's a different matter)

I suspect that the garage didn't put something back properly tightened up. By your comment on the steering wheel, I suspect that they didn't get the tracking right. .... if they removed the trackrod ends, the cheat method is to count the number of turns it took to remove it and when replacing it to screw it on the same number of turns. There's a fair chance they got this wrong.

Thinking about it, there has to be free rotational play on the trackrod end and balljoint connected to the steering rod across the front of the vehicle. If the garage bozo didn't allow this, then the movement of the front suspension would wreck both joints in quick sucession, possibly causing the catastrophic failure that your daughter experienced.

I would have nothing to do with these idiots. As it's safety related and they are trying to bullshit you to cover up their inadquate skill, I would get the AA to inspect the vehicle and trading standards involved with a view to getting the bodge artist who repaired your vehicle doing jail time !

Totally agree with RFMAN, if

Totally agree with RFMAN, if this was done through an insurance company i would now contact them and complain about this repairer. Keep all correspondence and put everything in writing, and do not accept telephone responses as they are difficult to prove who said what.

Ask your insurers to arrange an independent vehicle examination at their expense as it obviously left the repairers in a dangerous condition. This could potentially translate into a number of additional claims and expense for them (your insurers).

Any inherent wear will not be cured by changing the wheels around, nor will it prevent pulling in any direction. This would not cause wear in the steering box either, accident damage could damage the steering box or steering gear, something they should have spotted when they inspected the vehicle.

It was definalty a pull to

It was definalty a pull to right, and not turned right, then wouldn't turn back? Only ask as I had this problem with a truck which had been crunched and straightened. Turned out to be out of line inner wing fouling the shaft running from the bulkhead to the stearing box. Cought on the metal around the rubber join behind the stearing box.

Any veiws expresed in this thread by me are purely from my own experience, and (sometimes) falible memory. Hope my comments help, but please don't take them as gospel.

So what vehicle is this??

Just wondered as an idea that occured to me that hitting that part of the vehicle could have smacked the pitman arm and mangled the splines alowing for 'yahoo' steering.

Full of ideas but no time to do them!!

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