my car would be ok after the fix, as far as handling is concern.

 

Did you lift the throttle when the back end first kicked out to the right? If you did, you probably experianced throttle lift oversteer.
My foot was still on the gas at that point but I did not apply more gas.

With a RWD, like your wifes X5 and your clk, when you lift the throttle the backend slows first, giving you a little bit more control.

The 01'X5 is AWD, 50/50 split like the evo. It understeers a lot.

With a FWD car it's different, as long as you keep power to the front wheels, you have traction. If you lift the throttle, the front slows first making the problem worse. (this is what happened to you)
It happened to my Integra. It understeers and could not apply more power.

 

Whoa! sorry to hear about your situation, i have owned my evo since Oct. 2003, it is a great car, and as you said instills great confidence. i have not experienced what you went through, and i have been known to be pretty aggressive in the turns. i have to agree that it was probably due to your taking power away from the car. i have noticed that while accelerating through a long turning on ramp, the only time it feels as though the car might slide or drift is when shifting gears in the turn. it seems as soon as you take away the power the car reacts very differently. it is designed to attack the corners, absorbing the initial impact settling into the g forces then whipping the power to the firmly sitted rear end and shoots it out of the turn with a fury. i have succesfully done this many times without so much as a squeel. but when i shift in the turn, the car loses its sitting position and confidence, it seems to go through the turn, rather than sitting into it (not sure if that makes sense)


anyway, i was thinking of other factors, how about your tire pressure? low tire pressure could result in a weeker side wall, causing the tire to roll on its side alittle, if not.....it sounds so wierd..i would guess you would have to take a 45 degree turn at like 65 to do that....i believe you it just doesn't add up thats all


also, i bent my front left tie rod on my outback, it was never quite the same after the repair, always had a slight vibration at higher speeds, i hope this doesn't happen to you, GOOD LUCK!!

 

the kicker is that you had just washed your car before the crash. sorry bro same happened to me before my car got the windows smashed out and broken into

 

It's good to at least see that the aluminum supsension arms did what they were suppossed to do by bending and absorbing the impact without damaging the undercarriage or the suspension attachment points. It definitly looks fixable pretty easily assuming you didnt bend the mounting points. Dont feel bad, I hit a curb in one of my eclipses at about 25mph and thats about what it looked like. I paid $1100 for a new left rear control arm, hub and a bunch of smaller things that I screwed up. I will guess it would be a bit more for the evo though because of the Aluminum instead of cheap steel they use in the eclipse.

 

Thanks people. I just got the car towed to the dealer and will pay them a visit. Thanks all.

 

3 years ago I was leaving my gf house at 5 AM, the roads were empty and I wanted to have fun with My S2000. S2000’s do drift easily since they are rear wheel drive with some good power. Anyways, I am going down hill that turn to the left I switch in 3rd from 4th and the car drifts going down the hill and started spinning like a toy in the middle of 3 lane rd with concrete divider in the middle. To make the story short I spun so much I lost counting and here where I was sooo lucky when my car spun it was almost going for the curb in the middle however I did not hit the curb guess why, because there was an area where people can make U turn and I went through it spinning. I am having goose bumps now from this story. I was so luck no even funny.

 

Sorry to hear about your wreck.

Just about everything that could be said have already been said, but I'll add a couple more.

1. Your approach speed is really critical in street driving. It's always better to approach a little more slowly and accelerate out than going in too fast and having to correct. If you're braking in the turn, you entered that turn too quickly!

2. Get your braking done and downshift to the right gear to keep it in the powerband BEFORE you enter the corner. When you enter the turn, all you should be doing is gassing it and upshift if you have to. Do NOT just coast through the turn, which I see a lot of people do.

3. Hold your apex a little later than you're comfortable. This will help widen up the turn and give you more escape paths than if you apex early, pick up speed, and have less of an angle to make the turn. Also, the late apex will give you more visibility into the turn before you commit to the turn.

4. With the AWD, when the car starts getting skittish, you have to progressively feed it more gas. If you lift and/or touch the brakes, it will induce rotation. It's a good thing if you can catch it and feed the power on. But this is not a car you want to induce rotation; it's going to be gone! You can pull it off with a RWD, but AWD demands almost a lead foot. When it starts going, it's very hard to catch.

5. Like you said, this car has no electronic skid control. So you're all you have. Knowing what to do takes learning, and knowing how to pull it off takes practise (not something you want to do on the street).

The damage doesn't look too bad. I think if you fix it correctly, the car can maintain good suspension alignment and steering geometry. Also, don't be tempted to go with aftermarket suspension parts. Everything has to be fine-tuned as a package, and I think Mitsubishi did a pretty good job tuning the car from the factory. So don't mess with it unless you really know what you're doing.

Good luck.

 

those are good pointers! and remember that public road conditions are not always the same. that's why i dont try too much **** on the road. sorry about your accident man!

 

Yhea...it sounds an awful lot like liftoff oversteer. The WRX is also a serious offender in this category. It occurs while letting off the gas during a turn. The most common place to have this occur is on an expressway on/off ramp that you've taken a little too quicky.

After the fix your handling shouldn't be affected negatively, unless there is a crease or something similar in the frame.

 

yeah this reminds me of somthing that about made me **** my pants lol... I was taking an exit ramp around 100 and i lifted out of the throttle into a bend that tightend the rear started to step out but i just kept my witts about me and rolled back into the gas and the car straitend out perfectly.... anyway sorry to hear about your accident...... i had that same thing happend to me on cold tires once but its never been that extreme on warm tires....

 

That really sux
Have a body shop check it out to make sure you didn't bend anything else besides the suspension pieces. Once they replace what is needed you should be fine.

 

Cold tires, cold pavement, and TTO. Not really a surprising result. AWD won't help you once you started spinning, because you won't be able to get enough grip to pull out of the slide. If you had mashed the throttle instead of lifting, you would have come out of it, in all liklihood.


Glad you and your wife are ok. Cars are always fixable, people aren't.

 

sorry man.......yeah...stay on the gas

 

Sorry to hear about your unfortunate crash. You stated that you had just washed your car and after looking at the pics, it looks like your tires are quite shiny. Could it have been from the tire shine overspray or other cleaning liquid which settled on the pavement and then onto your tires? Just a theory...what do you think?