On Saturday I spent about 10 hours working on my car, I installed a new rack and pinion, two new control arms, new outer tie rod endings and new sway bar links. I took my time and make sure I did everything properly (or at least I thought I did) but after I was done I noticed some weird things about the car. To start the car felt horribly out of alignment as I expected, so I took it down to an alignment shop which they didn't seem to do their job 100% properly as they didn't used machines but it's good enough for the moment.

First issue I am experiencing is that there was some grinding of the control arm on my passenger side rotor in turns. We hammered the tip of the control arm so that there was some clearance so that seemed to fix that problem for now.... I'm still at a loss as to why the new control arm would even have clearance issues with the rotor, the last one didn't seem to have these issues.

Next problem and current issue I'm facing is that the car makes a knocking noise when you go over bumps or if you shake the steering wheel. The mechanic that helped me said that something might be loose but we did a quick check over all the major bolts today and nothing seemed to be loose. I am going back tomorrow to try again and see what else could be wrong but I'm at a loss right now as to what could be causing this.

I did a lot of things at once thinking it would make life easier but there seems to be so many things at play now I'm not sure what could be causing this odd symptom. Any suggestions or advice would be appreciated, thanks for taking the time to read this long post.

 

Did you use O.E.M or aftermarket parts? Control arm grinding on rotor seems highly unlikely with the correct parts. And what do you mean by "they didn't use a machine" to do the alignment?

 

They were aftermarket control arms, but how could they manufacture and sell a part that fit so horribly? Anyway I still have the old ones so maybe I will try putting those back on to see if it makes a difference, but any other suggestions are still welcome as I will run out of ideas quick if that doesn't fix it.

When I say he didn't use a machine I mean that used some weird ruler instead of the alignment computers that most shops I've seen use. Honestly I could care less how the guy does his alignments as long as it is done right, but the car didn't drive straight after his alignment. Instead of going straight while coasting the car will start drifting to the right.

 

A proper alignment Cannot be done with a ruler! Hold the old arm up to the new one and see if they are the same. Something sounds very wrong here.

 

Measured my control arms, they seemed to be the same size. Anyway I think I fixed the clunking noise. It seems I did not properly tighten my sway bar links so they were moving around a tiny bit. Thanks for the suggestions/help Spock

 

if this car was in accident most likely your whole front end is just twisted
my mother drove 2003 elantra after its been hit in 2004 till 2 weeks ago after she went to the dealer to do a control arm recall and mechanic said that the new simply will not fit because the whole thing is twisted so bad

 

I think that's what it was unfortunately. If the car still rides funny after I get a proper alignment I might just put it up for sale and get something different *shrug*