I need to move my car for some emergency repairs on my house; can I move my car from the inside the garage to the street without the strut rods and stabilizer bar installed? Thanks!
I wouldn't drive it.. Even pushing it is taking a chance.. Maybe ok if the ground is flat. Having to turn the wheel is a scary thought to me.
The stabilizer is not an issue - the strut rods are. Why not just bolt in the struts, even if not aligned, to keep the wheel in place while moving? If you do move it without the struts DO NOT hit the brakes as it will stop the front wheel but not the car ..........
Its not the stress on the suspension, the strut rods keep the wheels aligned. Take em off and the wheels have nothing, other than the upper and lower arms to keep them from pulling backwards towards the rear of the car (going forward). Just bolt em back in place to keep things from shifting too far out of line. They don't have to be tight or perfectly aligned to do it.
I had a strut rod break at 5 mph .... drove the tire back into the rear splash guard (inner fender). Not good. Ripped the steering wheel right out my grip too. Could have been life-changing 5 minutes earlier ... going 50 mph, I would have gone head-on into traffic going the other direction.
Perfect ........ now you can move the car away from the house without a problem. Scary stuff. Any idea why it failed? When rebuilding a suspension, I buy new ones no matter how good the old ones look. For anyone that does not know, 67-73 Mustang struts are the same part for our cars. Go to Melvins, or any Mustang place like NPD for them.
Oh yeah ... it was the evil urethane bushings that caused this. I had the whole poly-graphite bushing kit installed for the front suspension. The strut rod was original to the car and cracked right where the threads started. It had been cracked for a while, part of the crack was rusty, next to the clean snap, breaking it the rest of the way through. Eric ... handy to know that is the same as the Mustang piece. I really would like to switch to the aftermarket strut rods with the pivot point built in. That, along with roller perches and a Shelby drop are on the list for the front suspension.
No need to get snooty about this. Afterall, you simply left out the conditions in which it happened. I simply asked a question. And who knows ? That strut rod may have lasted for years more with the rubber bushings. The stiffer bushings may have just been the straw that broke the camel's back.
