That's right. My car started making a popping noise in the front about 7 months ago. I finally got it into the shop to see what the issue was.

The technician comes to me and says I have to show you something. I'm following him through the shop expecting him to show me a broken endlink or a blown strut. I takes his flashlight and shines it onto my FRAME to reveal a gigantic CRACK!

That's right, a crack in my subframe. Where the control arm meets the subframe (alignment bolt) my frame was cracked. It was so bad that within a month, it may have snapped causing my control arm to go free which wouldve ended more than likely in a wreck.

The crazy part was, there was a bolt but no nut Meaning there was nothing holding the alignment bolt in, it was just there cracking the frame!

There are two suspected causes by me as well as 3 other technicians:

A) My car is lowered and chicago roads are horrendous. The strain being put on the un-reinforced subframe caused a crack which got worse over time

B) When I last had my alignment done, they forgot to secure the bolt causing it to damage my frame to the point where it finally cracked!

I had intended to post pictures of the frame damage up, but due to the circumstances I was at a body shop within hours to have the crack welded and did not have time for pictures.

So far here's the bill:

$ 200 for the weld
$ 600 for a new subframe
$ 200 for a new control arm
$ 300 for labor costs

The frame is welded for now to buy me time until I can replace the sub-frame. This sucks, I wasnt planning on a popping noise being a $1300 repair. The only reason why its that cheap is because I know the owner of the shop doing the work. The dealer quoted me over $2500 to fix.


Point of this post:

Keep an eye on you alignment bolts, and make sure when anyone touches your car they put everything back. This repair was an unnecarry expense that could've caused a severe accident if I hadn't brought it into the shop.

Just thought I would share my latest experience.

 

wow man that sucks.. what dealership did you take it to?

 

I feel for you man, that sucks. I am usually in Chicago about once a month for work, and the roads up there are terrible with potholes. Sorry to hear that, are you going to turn it in to your insurance.

 

Same thing happened to me, sort of. I was hearing a popping sound when I would go around a corner. My lower control arm broke, at the adjuster pivot, and they found a small crack in the frame. The car was not lowered at the time.

 

no, not going through insurance, just going to pay for it when I have the money. I took it to Gurnee VW which is where I work, they're the ones that found the issue.

My previous Mazda dealer aligned my car last in Iowa, but that was a while ago, it may not have been them, who knows?

All in all it was nerv-racking. I decided to myself that if the damage was over 3K then I would trade the car in and if it was under 3K then I would repair it. Well it was 1K so Im still a happy RX8 owner. The technician at the time made it sound WAY worse than what it was. They were pretty much telling me my car was no-longer drivable and it wouldnt be worth the time to fix it. Good thing I have a good mechanic to help me out.

For reference, the car started making popping noises at right around 68-69K.

We discovered the issue at 73K miles.

If your mileage is within this realm, make sure you keep an eye on the underside of your car, making sure all bolts are tight and there's no wear and tear cracks under there. Man I cant stop thinking about what wouldve happend if my control arm had broken loose on say 2-94? That wouldve been bad.

 

i was autocrossing in my old car and control arms snapped
story ends with my car being towed

 

Man that's scary. I feel like I need to get mine checked out now.

 

crawl underneath and look at you alignment bolts where the control arm connects to the subframe lol. It was within plain sight. The crack was very bad and spread apart. My mechanic literally had to weld the bolt into the control arm to keep it all together.

 

wow man that's pretty crazy... Good thing nothing happened to you!