I was driving through a round-about on Friday night at about 40-50kph and I heard a loud bang come from the passenger side rear wheel arch/area. Immediatly the car spun out of control and as the tail end spun clockwise around me I tried to counter-steer and gain some composure but to no avail. I hit the skids as I drifted sideways and backwards I could not stop the car in time and it hit the curb of a traffic island. The passenger side rear wheel was the first to impact and as it slid up the curb and onto the island the sideskirt took the rest of the impact and it was pretty much destroyed. My missus and I sat there facing the way we were coming from thinking we are lucky to be alive and that no-one else was on the road at the time. There is a hell of a panel beating job ahead and about a day or two labour to change the subframe over. Thank god for people like - Gargoyle (John) who has lent me the carbon fibre laser to keep me off of public transport and given my injured Zed a safe place to stay. Ezzupturbo (Chris) who has taken the time to look at my car and tell me what I was dealing with, and offer his time and knowledge towards repair. Finally - ChilledPain (Jamie) whether he knows it yet or not lol, for his help too Any suggestions/comments are welcome and most invited. Here are some pics of the car just after the accident. Sorry about quality but I only had a bogus mobile phone camera. Cheers All..... Adam
Ouch!!! ...sounds like you had a similar experience that i had a couple of months ago. In my particular instance, my rear passenger side toe arm (hicas arm) snapped doing 80kph, hense making the ass end of the Zed start uncontrollably wobbling from left to right and crossing up on itself. I was lucky enough to pull it up in time without any other damage, but maybe a similar issue to yours?? Inspect underneith see what damage has been done. Here is my Linky-Poo! ...However, i'm SO glad to hear that YOU came out incident free in this one. Sounds like it could have ended up a LOT worse! Cheers, Benny. :zlove:
Dam not a nice way to end up. Looks like the damage is fairly minor as in the panels don't look to bad on the pictures. I would like to know if the cause is the same as Benny's as it maybe a thing for the to do list. Any way it could have been a lot worse and you parked it perfect up the medium strip. I would hate to think what would have resulted if you where going at speed. Speedy repairs Dave
No, there is no aftermarket parts. Stock as a rock in the running gear. Here are some more pics of the damage with the wheel off *note there is no damage to the HICAS at all. As far as panel damage goes, Gargoyle will post some new pics soon and you will see that there is actually EXTENSIVE panel damage and I'm still waiting on quotes or even as to whether or not it can even be repaired I'm scared to stone with anticipation.
ouch !!! hicas is the devil on a 20+ year old zed. i ripped mine out years ago after hearing stories like this... good preventative maintenance if you ask me !!
NA rear conversion FTW. I pulled apart my NA subframe for a rebuild yesterday, I was shocked by how thin the whole assembly is... Basically 1mm sheetmetal pressed into control arms, welded mounting points, and 19mm bolts holding it together. While I'm all for aftermarket parts, I'm still wondering if the OEM parts were designed this way to be the first to be damaged in such an accident as yours...
There is no obvious sign of of anything breaking or going wrong. my guess is the hicas just turned and stuffed him up as his hicas light has been on for quiet a while now.
that would be rare for that to happen, but anything is possible, remember hicas max movement is only 2 degrees, its not like yanking the steering wheel, especially at under 60 kays
yeah those rear steering racks are ready to go at any time, you better rip your front one out too and get it replaced, or better yet get a lock out bar for the front too.....
:rofl: - well done Niall, i like that! seconded. thirded. it does sound like something had a clean "break". If it was Hicas alone failing, i can't imagine it would all of a sudden make a bang noise and throw your wheels off on that much of an angle. But a thorough inspection might shed more light. Please post up your findings though, this may benefit people when inspecting their own suspension/steering components also.
After ezzupturbo suggested this to me I was convinced that this is what happened. About a month ago I took a corner pretty quick and then planted it After the car straightened up I looked down at my dash and saw 2 warning lights (HICAS & LIGHTS) they were not there before. I took the car to PZP after an ignition problem (could not start car). I asked Tom to have a look at it for me, he was great. After fixing the ignition for me he had a look at the HICAS and replaced the fuse (which was blown) in the drivers kickpanel. He said I have a small steerig fluid leak (very slow) and that he had checked over the HICAS lines and could not locate a leak anywhere which led him to believe that it must be in the front steering lines somewhere and he would need more time to have a look. I asked if it was safe to take the car on the last cruise we just had (ty spikie & jinxed) and Tom said "it was ok, if HICAS warning lights come up again you probably will have thrown the fuse again so dont worry". All was fine, I drove for like 2 days straight without a problem and then on the third day I went to the cruise. When we left the first meet point, I got the HICAS light up on the second corner and I was like "FFS!". the car still ran fine until another small unrelated problem caused me to break down. Vader (Dave) fixed it for me and I was all good again. The road was wide, smooth, new & clean. The "Bang" certainly felt like it was HICAS related and when the car spun out of control, (this may sound crazy) it felt like the rear passanger wheel had turned 90degrees to the left and was in effect, driving the car around on itself in a clockwise circle. Obviously this is not possible but I am trying to explain how different it felt to just loosing it in a car. Something really weird happened back there and I'll be damned if I can explain it. I think my car is haunted/possesed. It needs an exorcism.
I will definately post all findings guys, don't worry about that Gargoyle should be putting some pics up today for me as the car is with him. He may be able to get some better shots than me and hopefully shed more light. I have to say though, I'd be willing to bet that if and when we do the fix, we will find something as parts start getting pulled off the car. Stay tuned...
It appears that hi - cas only moves by a few degrees at most normally ?. does anyone know if the racks let go how far could the rear steering actually move . If there is nothing obviously broken or the wheel was still on tight for you to feel like the rear was turning maybe the racks can let go and move a fair bit ?.
The hicas link is nothing like a steering rack at all, it is basically a double acting hydraulic ram. In the event of failure a steering rack still retains full mechanical connection internally via the rack and pinion(for those that don't know, the rack and pinion are two gears. The pinion is round like a normal gear, the rack is long and flat with teeth on one side). Other than failures outside like a broken tie rod or rack end, the pinion will never loose contact with the rack and cause the wheels to go where ever they want. The hicas link (we refer to it as the hicas rack) is relying on seals at various points internally to keep the left and right sides seperated into several different chambers. The hicas solenoid under the bonnet diverts oil to one side or the other depending on steering wheel input. If one of seals blow the piston will travel to the opposite side that blew the seal because pressure is now different on each side in the piston, the same as when you input steering movement and it csusing the rear to steer. Except now there is no control on how much movement or which direction. Hydraulics are very reliable, but after 20 years with zero maintenance on the system, they can and will blow. The piston travel may only yeild 2 degree net wheel travel under normal operating conditions, but can itself travel about 2 inches from centre in either direction. This is enough to give a heap of wheel travel and do exactly as has happened here. I do not know for sure this is what caused the issue, but I would say with out any evidence of failure in the suspension components, it is almost certainly what caused it. The load bang that was heard was very likely the seal blow and the piston slamming to one side uncontrolled.
