My buddy has a 2006 GTI. He was driving in a parking lot, wasnt paying attention and hit a low divide curb thingy front on. He seems to have bent a chassis frame part that i cant identify. Its the part that attached the wheel to the cars chassis.

The cars left front wheel is now bent backwards. Right front wheel seems to be fine.

Here are pics:

Unaffected right side. notice how the chassis bar on the right side is straight




Left Side




Another shot





Question:

1. What is the bant piece called? Would it be expensive to replace?
2. From the pics, do you think there is any other chassis damages? sway bar look inverted only because the right side pic was taken from the front, while the bend site; pics where tan from the back

 

 

Looks like the lower control arm to me. Shouldn't be too difficult to replace. I mean relative to if he had bent the frame itself, anyway.

 

They are two seperate pieces correct?

I raised the car with the jack to take the pics, but i couldnt get underneath it enough to see if there is any other damange.
Just that bent piece is clearly visible and is causeing the wheel to be jammed backwards towards the back of the fender



ANy idea how much this would cost to replace if this is all that is wrong with the car?



edit: Isnt the control arm above the part im talking about??

this is the piece that im refering to

 

Not much... probably $200 tops for the part if he gets it online. Less if he can find one in a junk yard. I've heard of people replacing the LCAs on VWs almost as a part of routine maintenance... not sure about GTIs but they seem to require replacement after 100k+ miles on a lot of other VW/Audis.

As far as if there's damage beyond that, just check out what it connects to and see if it's still straight. If you replace the LCA and it still pulls or rubs or anything then it'll be obvious.

 

Left front lower arm is definitely bent. Other items could be affected but I would start there.

 

Thanks guys, so yea it is the driver side lower control arm, hopefully this is all thats wrong because there is damange to the front spoiler, mud guards etc, so it wont be too cheap to repair, but not as bad as my initial visual inspection

At first glance i had told my buddy there was atleast 5-10K dollars worth of damages (before i looked under, i had assumed the worst, chassis frame, struts etc )

 

....lower control arm replacement should be less than $500. They last on the new 2006+ vw's, but before then, a $1,000+ replacement for the upper and lower bushings every 100,000 wasn't out of the question

 

Bet money the wheel bearings are dented. You can't put that much energy into a lower control arm and not hurt the wheel bearings. There may still be frame issues depending on how soft the bolts holding the arm are. If the bolts are soft, probably not. If the bolts are hard (grade 8 or higher) it's possible the frame took a beating too.

Anytime you hit something this hard, it's possible there are quite a few bent things, especially when the LCA deforms the way this one did.

 

you might as well just file a claim

 

yea on the net its priced between 200-300$, and yea from the VW forums i did gather wat you said about the bushings being replaced every so often. People started puttin on S3 bushings sicne they are aluminum and stronger. Apparantly this improves handling but i digress

hmmm... thanks alot man thats exactly what I wanted to hear, most likely this wont be taken to the VW dealership to be fixed, so i want to know what to look out for. Thanks. You can never be to careful.

Yea heres the ****ty part, my buddy just imported this car from a different country and was gonna insure and register it this week. He shouldnt have been driving, and he just learnt an expensive lesson.

Thanks alot CL'ers, u guys are awesome.