MaxSE98

hey , sunday night i was going up an onramp to the highway and someone in the merging lane didnt yield , i wasforced to hug the gaurd rail to keep from hitting them and there was a storm grate with a very steep trailing edge about 10 inches tall , my front right wheel hit it and hit it hard. i know for a fact that i blew the strut i put the car on the lift at work and theres a chunk of the seal pulled out, rubbing the shock shaft. my problem is , under power and over bumps im getting alot of vibration almost as if i was getting wheel hop , is this normal behavior with a blown strut or did i break something that isnt apparent to the untrained eye??. im upgrading my suspension shortly and im using my 3rd gen for the time being, is there anything else that could be broken ??
thanks very much for any help u can offer
maxse98

vmok

Without looking at the car, there could me other things broken.

From the sounds of it though, you've verified that the shock/strut assembly is damaged. Is there oil leaking out of there as well? If a strut/shock has lost all of it's damping capability, you can get wheelhop as there is nothing to control the energy of the spring, and it will continue to go up and down like a pogo stick when you go over bumps.

You probably want to make sure that the control arm isn't bent, and that your wheels isn't bent. hitting a 10" tall ledge can bend a wheel, causing a vibration while you're driving even when there are no bumps.

If the rear wheel hit it as well, you might have two bent rims. I'd suggest going into a tire shop and seeing if they can do a 4 wheel dynamic balance to see if the whole wheel/tire assembly is balanced as it's moving.

-V

MaxSE98

i checked both rims , there is no vibration unless i hit a bump, this is probably only attributable to my huge tires, the yokos that i run are a really wide and heavy(bad for speed good for abuse) tire they are 8.3 inches wide in the 225/50/16 size which is why i chose them, so i think that helped alot, it is the strut leaking and im driving the car to work today to attempt to better diagnose it. thanks much
-pete

Daniel B. Martin

I agree with everything Vmok posted, and will add one more idea. Rotate your tires, exchanging fronts and rears. If the symptom diminishes, that points to a damaged wheel and/or tire.

MaxSE98

does that also apply if the wheel only bounces when it encounters a bump? , on a completely straight road there is no vibration..

Daniel B. Martin

Rotating the tires is a fault isolation technique. It applies to your case. However, the "only on bump" observation points to something other than a wheel or tire. It points to a strut problem.