The front undercarriage of my 2001 Audi Allroad dropped onto the pavement the other day while driving. Kaput, undriveable. I can’t imagine this is a common occurrence. Less than a year ago I had a new steering rack and torque converter put in. My question is would the mechanics have had to remove the bolts to do the work - and maybe they didn’t replace them or replace them correctly?
Some of the fasteners are single use so if they were reused that might have been the failure . You need to tasks a good look at what actually broke .
The Zit’s comic strip today addresses your situation. Jeremy had his VW microbus in the shop and it was on a hoist. The technician told him that sooner or later he would have to address some undercarriage problems. The technician no sooner gets the words out of his mouth than the body drops to the ground leaving the underpinnings of the Microbus on the hoist. The technician then says “Make that sooner”.
I saw that one. I loved it.
This sort of reminds me of how my '79 Toyota pickup bit the dust. The truck started feeling weird, and every time I went over a bump I could hear a thunking sound. I pulled into a parking lot, pushed on the top front of the bed, and it thunked on the back of the cab. I figured ‘oh great, my bed mounts are rotted’. I slid underneath and discovered I was wrong. The frame had rotted through on both sides, and the only thing holding the front and the back together was the bed. The whole thing was moving up and down like a hinge.
I always said I’d drive that truck until it broke in half in the middle of the road. I never expected that it would actually happen!
By “undercarriage” I assume you mean the engine cradle. Also goes by the name “sub-frame”. Anyway, on many steering rack jobs I’ve done, you have to loosen, (not completely remove) the bolts that hold the engine cradle/sub-frame to the body. This gives you more room to remove & re-install the steering rack. Maybe they loosened not all of the bolts & that’s why it took this long for the catastrophic failure. I’m guessing here.
Please give us more info. How did you see the resulting failure? Was it towed to a shop? If so, what do the mechanics say?
Please post back!
“The frame had rotted through on both sides, and the only thing holding the front and the back together was the bed. The whole thing was moving up and down like a hinge”.
My brother had the same thing happen on a Datsun pickup. He “fixed” it by using C clamps and a 4 x 4 to hold the frame until he could locate a Datsun truck with a bad engine. He swapped the engine into the replacement truck. However, that frame gave up, so the remains went to the junkyard with an engine that survived two trucks.
I gave mine to the local boneyard owner. He bolted 2x4s between the back of the cab and the front of the bed and used it for a yard truck for years.
Yeah, my Buick too. Had it in for alignment and the guy called and insisted I drive 50 miles home to look at it. Not much holding it on anymore but the old guy that had been in business for 50 years said he could fix it but it would cost about $150. He fixed it and felt like giving him a tip.