Bad news for my Lumina

[Ofnarcr]

So I was getting new tires for my Lumina at the local auto center when a worker came out telling me all the problems they had just found. Ughh I knew this was going to be bad. When i first got the car(which was free) I knew right away there was a strut problem, In fact both rear struts were leaking and the mounts were cracked all together. Also my front outer cv boot was torn and there's no grease in it. 3rd when they tried the front alignment another problem was discovered, the camber is....well....horrible! In order to fix that they said they would have to reem into the right front shock bolts on top and slide it out how ever far it needs to be. For the left however it has a positive camber, meaning there is a bent suspension piece somewhere making wheel bend outwards,in order to fix that they have to rip up the front end and find the bent piece. Please help I don't know what to tackle first and I don't get paid six figures.

(1990 3.1)

[jeffcoslacker]

Unless you are wearing tires really crazy or driving sideways down the road or something, don't worry about the alignment stuff for now.

The fact that the rear struts are leaking doesn't neccessarily mean they are shot. It might be something that can wait. Do they still work OK?

As for the CV boot and joint, get a reman axle assembly, not very expensive, and have it installed or do it yourself (not real hard)

It's not uncommon for an older FWD car to have strut towers that have gotten hammered inward from metal fatigue. They may not be able to get a perfect alignment without bending or egging out mounting holes, but I bet they could get close enough. How much do they want to do that??

I'd look into having a body shop pull it back into shape if I was real worried about it. They can do it with a unibody rack, and their labor rate is lower than most mechanical shops.

All that's left is to see exactly what they meant by cracked mounts. Do they mean the upper part of the towers in the body are split? I've seen that happen on cars with real bad rust problems. That's probably the most serious problem if that's the case. A repair would involve removal of the struts on the topside, and cutting out the damaged metal and welding in some new plate to repair it. I hope that it isn't that bad. Did they show you what they were talking about?

Did you get the tires?

Does it drive OK?

[jeffcoslacker]

Most common cause of the excess pos camber on the left wheel would be a bent lower control arm, you could probably see that if you looked under it with it on the ground. Control arms are VERY easy to do on these.

Also, call a good parts store that carries MOOG chassis parts. They have a line of parts called "Problem Solvers" that are made to deal with some car's inherent design flaws that make them difficult to align.

Things like offset control arm shafts, eccentric camber bolt kits, etc. There may be something to make up for excess camber due to body fatigue. Maybe an offset upper mounting plate or something.

Possible the strut is bent, too. That'd be easy enough to fix. Can't believe they couldn't tell you what was wrong. There's nothing that has to be "torn apart" to find it, just take some measurements and comparisons and see what the problem is.