I was driving my 77 911 home from the office today when I had a mechanical failure and near disaster. I was traveling approximately 75 mph, when traffic slowed suddenly. I applied the brakes fairly hard,but not panic stop hard. As I slowed, I felt a pop in the steering, the car darted to the left, the wheel(s) locked billows of blue smoke and I had no control of the steering. The left side tires were riding against the divider curb, steering the car and keeping me from crossing into the express lanes on RT-80. I stopped and got out of the car to find the drivers front tire pointing out to the left, the steering wheel and right tire were pointing straight. The drivers tire was also pressed backwards into the rear of the wheel well.
Luckily, 2 guys in a flatbed, who were checking out my car as I passed them, saw the whole thing and stopped to assist me. We loaded the 911 onto the flat bed and got it home.
While it was still up on the flatbed, I looked to see what went wrong. I thought a tierod had snapped,although they are new 930 types. What I found was the front torsion bar mount tore out of the under carriage. The metal is clean fresh and shiney, no rust or rot. This car has only been on theEast Coast, in a garage, for the past 3-years. It came from San Francisco, where it spent it's lifedry nad rust free.

So, have you ever seen this happen before?



Thanks,
Ed

QUOTE (Evill Ed @ Aug 18 2005, 08:17 PM)

So, have you ever seen this happen before?

that's the first one for me ...

glad you're OK!
Andy

Yikes, good thing your ok....(never seen that b4)

Damn........ That could have been really nasty. I would have guessed tire rod also. I have never seen that before.

Damn, that had to raise the pucker factor. Glad your ok.

How would you even check for something like that?

Don

Woah, that's nuts! I think I'll reinforce that area on my 914 now.

I came close to that, but not at speed. It happened when I was pulling into a driveway,rusty suspension pan. My wheels didn't bow either. If you jacked it up the whole suspension at the mounts would drop........SCARY! This was on the 70T and it is now repaired.

dang! never even would have guessed that as a failure point...

hope it had a brown interior.... cuz its got a brown seat cushion now!

Ed
That's Karma for selling the 914 for a 911. Should have kept the teener.


Glad your OK.

I replaced the reinforcement plate in that area on a 914-6 once. The factory spot welds were not that good and the piece was coming loose.

The top of those threaded bosses in a 914 has a pretty fat mig weld usually. It would be pretty hard to tear through the floor unless the mig weld didn't penetrate the threaded piece.

Chris, these have no welds on the top. they look like they were only attached on the base. Looks more like a well-nut with the metal pinched between it.

I'm gonna run a full mig bead around the base try to drill a hole in the top section a get a good plug weld on it.

Ed

Hi Ed,

I'm glad that you're safe, the rest we know you can fix it!

I've seen the suspension mounts on other cars torn loose by the ratcheting chains they use on car carriers.

Scary to loose parts at speed...glad you're OK!

YIKES!!!

Chalk one up for the 914, as I don't think this could happen on a '14.

My guess is that at some time in the past the car was jerked really hard at that front loop, or maybe tied down a little too tight with a chain???

Glad to know it didn't cause bodily harm, Ed. Is the driver's seat OK?

QUOTE (9146986 @ Aug 19 2005, 04:44 AM)

YIKES!!! Chalk one up for the 914, as I don't think this could happen on a '14. My guess is that at some time in the past the car was jerked really hard at that front loop, or maybe tied down a little too tight with a chain??? Glad to know it didn't cause bodily harm, Ed. Is the driver's seat OK?

Well, let's just say that the Interstate was'nt the only place with skid marks.

Ed

My dad's '87 911 has had the swaybar mount break off twice. While not nearly as bad it still can cause that puckering factor when running mountain roads in North GA.

wow! does the 911 have reinforcing plates on the upper side of the sheet metal? how does one ensure the placement is dead on when you reweld? this will haunt me everytime i'm driving at a good clip. thanks.

k

While you may think there's no rust in there, odds mare thre is. I've repaired maybe 30-40 of those. The 4 piece kit is readily available. The batteries overflow (sound familiar?) and eat the nose pan away. Major job, often hacked by shops that either don't understand the cars or are trying to make big bucks fast. 10-12 hours, with a hoist so you can work from both the bottom and the top. Never seen this failure in a 914, which has a completely different front end. The Cap'n

Looked at a 911 Targa with a sportomatic that had this problem. Owner was trying to sell it and he said it had "some rust" in the front pan. When I looked at it, both sides were eaten away by rust. He had taken a piece of angle iron and bolted it to the front bolt on each arm, and bolted it through the rusty pan in the middle with carriage bolts he bought at the hardware store.

Needless to say, I didn't even drive the car.

scary shit!!!