Handling a bit off, steering wheel vibration
 

About a month ago I had a little accident with my RX-8, nothing too serious, and I just got it back from the shop. After the accident it was fairly obvious that my alignment was off because I have alot of negative camber and one of the wheels was pretty much straight up and down and the other wheel in the front still had a nice angle to it. So the body shop performed an alignment on it, check out the supension pieces, and said they couldn't find anything visibly wrong with the suspension. They aligned my wheel that was off back to my original specs, but it still feels the same. When I turn at low speeds it makes a clunking sound, and the supension doesn't feel as tight as it was pre-accident, and the steering wheel also has a slight vibration to it. And the steering wheel is also a little off center when driving straight. So does anyone have any ideas what this could be? I have searched many times and I checked most of the common problems and it just doesn't seem to quite match what I am experiencing.

Can you give more details about the accident and what was affected?

I can think of 3 possible problems:
1) suspension components are either loose or bent. (clunking)
2)Your alignment is still off and they screwed something up (steering wheel off center)
3)Your wheels are out of balance or out of round. (cause of vibration)

The wheel should be dead on, no vibration, and definitely no clunking from the suspesion. I think they missed something in the alignment or suspension. It's possible whatever happened in the accident bent some of your suspension components or beat up some of the bolt holes to where they have too much play in them so it's not tight.

I would bring it back to the shop first and have the guy ride with you and point out all the issues. If still no success bring it to the dealer. You don't want to have a messed up suspension.

Well it is going to the dealer Monday, the accident was basically me avoiding a guy that turned in front of me and sliding into a ditch. Cracked up the front bumper, and basically just the jolt of going into the ditch. I am hoping it is only a bent wheel, because I have a spare sitting in my garage. I have also read that the clunking sound could be the sway bar, I checked that out today, tried to tighen all the bolts, and they were pretty tight. I also checked the control arms and they looked to be fine. But than again you never know.