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  #1  
Old 04-20-2009, 09:03 AM
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My SVX is leaning

Yesterday afternoon I had the car out of the garage and for the first time in weeks had a good straight front-on view of it.

I noticed the car appeared to be leaning onto it's passenger side, enough that my wife even noticed it right away when she came outside. Tires all fully inflated. I could get 3 fingers in between the tire and fender on the drivers side front, but 2 is a tight squeeze on the passenger side front. The rear doesn't seem to be as affected, both in the visual test and finger test.

I had noticed some clunking on slow speed steering lately, not sure if it is related or not. Clunks I'm used to - being able to visually see the car leaning though is quite disturbing.
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  #2  
Old 04-20-2009, 11:27 AM
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Re: My SVX is leaning

Sounds like a rusted out top mount on that strut....
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  #3  
Old 04-20-2009, 01:03 PM
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Re: My SVX is leaning

Quote:
Originally Posted by huck369 View Post
Sounds like a rusted out top mount on that strut....
I was thinking something along those lines would make sense, how would I check for sure?

Yesterday I popped the hood and took the cap off the strut tower and did a quick untrained visual inspection. Everything looked fine from the top and matched the other side.

Also, the mounts, struts, and springs were all replaced by YT in November, alledgedly they only had about 20K miles on them. Alledgedly.
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  #4  
Old 04-20-2009, 01:12 PM
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Re: My SVX is leaning

I'd guess that your problem is more visible from inside the wheelwell than under the hood.
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  #5  
Old 04-20-2009, 08:33 PM
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Re: My SVX is leaning

Yep...a bad top mount won't look any different under the hood, you'd have to look up from underneath...

I'd just pull it off and see....if it comes apart when you take it off...it was bad
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  #6  
Old 04-20-2009, 10:01 PM
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Re: My SVX is leaning

Well this is my DD so don't want that to happen without being prepared with a replacement. But on that note, if this was the case, should I not be driving it around anyway? I did my 18 mile round trip on the highways today and had visions of the whole car suddenly smashing down onto that wheel at high speed and then bad things happen.
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  #7  
Old 04-21-2009, 05:17 AM
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Re: My SVX is leaning

Well...it can't really fall down to much as the spring will be contained in the strut tower.....but I wouldn't recommend driving it like that too much....
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  #8  
Old 04-21-2009, 05:45 AM
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Re: My SVX is leaning

Clunking... leaning... I'm no expert, but I wouldn't back it down the driveway 'til I figured out what was wrong.

dcb
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  #9  
Old 04-21-2009, 07:43 AM
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Re: My SVX is leaning

My brother had a similar problem in his focus and part of the spring cracked apart up where the top mount was. Although his was rusted through after a few NJ winters.
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  #10  
Old 04-21-2009, 08:21 AM
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Re: My SVX is leaning

Okay, I'll get under there tonight and see what I can see and report back.

Time to line up some alternate transportation I guess.

Really sucks, because my 200K mile struts/spring/mounts at least didn't do this to me.

Guess this isn't one of those parts you want to buy used, even low mile.
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I don't care, I'm still free, You can't take the sky from me...
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  #11  
Old 04-21-2009, 07:31 PM
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Re: My SVX is leaning

This afternoon I jacked the car up on the passenger side enough to see what's going on in there. To my untrained eye it doesn't look that great, but then again I don't know what normal is supposed to look like.



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Troy

1992 SVX LSL "Serenity" 250,000 miles!

I don't care, I'm still free, You can't take the sky from me...
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  #12  
Old 04-21-2009, 07:34 PM
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Re: My SVX is leaning

I tried getting a few pictures of the driver's side as well for comparison, but couldn't really get the same view. At this point I'm afraid to jack the car up on that side and put extra pressure on the gimpy side.



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Troy

1992 SVX LSL "Serenity" 250,000 miles!

I don't care, I'm still free, You can't take the sky from me...
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  #13  
Old 04-21-2009, 07:37 PM
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Re: My SVX is leaning

At this point I should also note that the "clunking" sound I've been hearing (even before noticing the leaning) is definitely on the DRIVER's side and I can actually feel it thump slightly from my left foot (the dead pedal area) sometimes. It's not a terribly loud or disturbing sound, but it's been there a while when making slow sharpish turns. Opposite side of the lean though.
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Troy

1992 SVX LSL "Serenity" 250,000 miles!

I don't care, I'm still free, You can't take the sky from me...
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  #14  
Old 04-22-2009, 05:18 AM
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Re: My SVX is leaning

Could be a bad axle...but could also be the drivers side strut bottoming out due to the passenger side being messed up, and the drivers side is having to carry more load than it was designed for...
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  #15  
Old 04-22-2009, 08:22 AM
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Re: My SVX is leaning

Can you tell anything from the pictures?

I'll probably take it to my independent Subaru shop tomorrow or Friday, but I hate to make the trip out there, have them determine the problem, and then end up with the car stranded there a copule days while they wait for a part to come in.
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1992 SVX LSL "Serenity" 250,000 miles!

I don't care, I'm still free, You can't take the sky from me...
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