What's wrong here?

I agree 100% with Moats, quit diving the damn thing until you get it fixed. It scares me to think my wife and kids could be driving on the same roads with you. Sounds to me like a broken subframe mount, but whatever it is you shouldn't be driving it. Bob

Stop driving the darn thing or you will be the accident other people will be avoiding.

The fact that he described the problem here, where it will live forever archived at google, will provide great evidence of negligence and disregard for human life at his trial. No trying to weasel out by saying that it was an accident, a completely unpredictable event.

JazzMan

It might be the steering rack going out. The rubbing going to the right might be the power steering pump having to work harder than normal. The pop or clunk might have been it skipping a gear on the rack, or maybe the steering wheel itself is loose and jumped a notch.

Something like that happened to my dad's not long before his engine fell out on a right hand turn.

The frame the engine sits on broke away from the body.

Mike

MikeS18xx wrote:

sounds like a subframe mount broken to me. when this happend to me car was also pullinjg and made a weird sound when i was braking.

subframe was 69 bucks and a couple days work..

(used)

better be safe then sorry

What comes into my mind is that I'm reading a post from somebody who has no helpful advice, but does have time to waste bitching at me like I'm some kind of moron for asking a tech forum on the internet rather than going straight to a clip-joint auto-ripoff place and blowing $895 out my ass so they can replace every part in the front end *except* the one that's actually broken. (I already had one guy lie through his teeth to me about it being a strut.)

Now then, did it cross your mind that I might own *two* cars?

Jesus....

Please explain how that would account for the symptoms, as I don't see how it would affect the orientation of the steering wheel *or* the rubbing on right turns.

Because the sub frame is not properly fastened to the car it moves. That moves the steering gear which is bolted to the sub frame. Which moves the rest of the suspension out of alignment. Real safe. Good buy.

Have you even bothered to look at the rear mounts yet? Or do you just not think a front subframe starting to fall off would affect how the car drives?

Read his replies, you will get your own answer.

I agree, it sounds like the subframe bolts are broken and it has dropped. A visual inspection is fairly simple to confirm. Depending upon which bolts break you can get various symptoms. Sometimes the transmission won't shift properly as the linkage is jammed. Sometimes steering is affected. It will get worse and could cause an accident. The fix can be as little as $200 at a small local shop or $5-600 at a dealer. Ford recalled these for retrofit and I don't think there was any time or mileage limit.

Sounds to me like a spring or strut problem. When you turn the wheel the spring is rubbing on the wall.

If the rear subframe drops a bolt, then it sits cockeyed to the chassis. If it sits cockeyed to the chassis, the front wheels have to point somewhere OTHER than straight ahead to actually go some approximation of straight. And it can shift on cornering, causing a rubbing sound.

Now, all that being said, it may well be that a strut tower pulled out, the steering rack broke, a bushing disentigrated, or a dozen other extremely hazardous situations. But the question was about the rear subframe, and it defnitely COULD cause the problem.