dwz8
April 11th 2006, 16:54
Since I posted this elsewhere, I will do this here as well for the records:
Does a single pothole hurt?
I myself made the miserable experience a couple of weeks ago, driving another owner's Z8.
We measured the towers using a ruler before we started to drive. They were almost flat, the "bulging" was about 1 mm on either side, nothing to worry about.
During our short trip, I was allowed to drive a short time myself. Believe it or not, half a mile down the road there was the famous pothole waiting for me, I saw it too late and hit it with the left front wheel. All I could do was to take my foot off the brake pedal to ease the pain.
After the impact, we immediately went back and measured the strut towers in the same way we had done before. The left one's bulging was now 3 mm. One single pothole, speed was about 50 mph. In my 7 series I wouldn't have thought about this kind of impact for a second.
Here it bend a strut tower such that it was easily measurable with a simple ruler.
Needless to say that this was a most embarrassing experience for me, and I can only thank the owner for the way he handled this.
Consequence:
Measure the top of your strut towers, if they are not flat (follow Juergen Wunderlich's suggestion), you have an issue. It is certainly correct that a lot of cars have some kind of damage in this area, however, most of those are steel cars, which is a completely different story.
Andrew warned several times that driving may cause further damage, and he was laughed at for it. I can only confirm, that a single pothole was enough in this case.
Does a single pothole hurt?
I myself made the miserable experience a couple of weeks ago, driving another owner's Z8.
We measured the towers using a ruler before we started to drive. They were almost flat, the "bulging" was about 1 mm on either side, nothing to worry about.
During our short trip, I was allowed to drive a short time myself. Believe it or not, half a mile down the road there was the famous pothole waiting for me, I saw it too late and hit it with the left front wheel. All I could do was to take my foot off the brake pedal to ease the pain.
After the impact, we immediately went back and measured the strut towers in the same way we had done before. The left one's bulging was now 3 mm. One single pothole, speed was about 50 mph. In my 7 series I wouldn't have thought about this kind of impact for a second.
Here it bend a strut tower such that it was easily measurable with a simple ruler.
Needless to say that this was a most embarrassing experience for me, and I can only thank the owner for the way he handled this.
Consequence:
Measure the top of your strut towers, if they are not flat (follow Juergen Wunderlich's suggestion), you have an issue. It is certainly correct that a lot of cars have some kind of damage in this area, however, most of those are steel cars, which is a completely different story.
Andrew warned several times that driving may cause further damage, and he was laughed at for it. I can only confirm, that a single pothole was enough in this case.