I recently got into an rear side accident which caused my steering wheel to be turned to the right while the car is going straight. Well now the car goes straight but I'm not very sure if the steering wheel is staright. The body shop did a full alignment and changed some rear suspension components.

Well in the beginning, after the accident I automatically checked the rear bottom suspension and saw that it looked like this. I thought something was off and just left it for the body shop to fix. Well I finally got the car back and it still looked the same. So is this normal?

 

I don't see anything out of the ordinary

 

looks fine to me....

 

Well that part right in the middle looks off center

 

When I saw your picture I thought that the piece in the middle looked odd. Just went out to the garage and looked under my car and it looks the same!

 

+1

Cant remember the name of that part, but it looks just fine, Mine looks identical.

 

Nope, the geometric constraints of the design happen to make it look off centered when your car is sitting on level ground. Those pivots articulate throughout the entire course of your suspension travel to define the vertical (and lateral) plane of travel for your suspension. It's actually a pretty clever set of nested arms with a third pivot that attaches to the chassis. If you centered them all up, you'd have zero travel and no control because all your pivots would be in a straight line. You can't define a plane with a straight line.

Nissan literature calls it a "panhard rod," but that's technically not correct. They do both serve similar purposes, but the execution is different. The Nissan design is much more sophisticated. I forget the exact name at this moment, but it's Swiss and hyphenated.

 

IIRC it's a variation of the "Watts Linkage"

 

I cannot believe you said that after 3 years and 3663 posts on the org. ..

 

Pretty funny


I have done the same too .

 

Isn't that a Torsen Beam?

 

NIssan calls it a Torsion Beam, but in a technical sense, it is something a bit different....

 

Here is a pick of my 2002 for comparison:

 

how come the 2003(2k3titaniumSE) look all rusted compared to the 2002(2002Maxima SE)which look pretty good

 

weather, maintenance, etc...

 

2002maximase is probably garage kept. rain and snow doesnt touch it unless hes driving i guess

 

Yeah, must be nice not having any rust.

 

hey are you lowered on anything? or stock suspension?

 

THat's Looks fine to me....I just took a pic of mines N i dont see no difference..By the way mine is Lowered!

 

That picture reminds me..... gotta try to put my RSB on either today or tomorrow.

 

Two reasons:

1)I live in the south (no salted roads in winter time)
2)Purple Power, a brush and follow up with spray wax.

 

Stock suspension with a Stillen RSB.

 

You wax and detail your under carriage?

 

I de-grease and use spray wax/spray protectant on any suspension parts when I'm under there working on them.

 

Ahhh, so that's what lies under all that rust under my car.

 

that's what I was about to say.

Tim, I just noticed you have no "I support Maxima.org" smiley....does that mean you never donated, you dirty dog?

 

Yeah, I did...Dec. 24th 2003 (I was at work obviously)

Not sure if that smiley is on other mods' profiles or not.

 

Now that's detailing.