Has anyone repaired a bent steering knuckle? The main long skinny area on a knuckle has been bent and it needs to be straightened. It's about 2-3" under where the upper control arm bolts to the knuckle and has been bent maybe 1/8-1/4" costing positive camber. I was thinking of having an alignment/machine shop look at it or try and repair it myself. Heating it and bending/beating it back. Anyone that has experience with this please post your thoughts.

Even if this method doesn't work, its free, so I would atleast attempt it before spending money on a new/used knuckle and swapping everything over to it, which can be expensive.

 

ive heard it done before, sometimes to purposely induce negative camber. worth trying. i dont see much danger in it.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Tyson &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">ive heard it done before, sometimes to purposely induce negative camber. worth trying. i dont see much danger in it.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Do you know how they did it? What method did they use?


Modified by EKhothatch at 5:36 PM 10/25/2005

 

stick it in a big vice and put a pipe around the top of the knuckle and heat and bend it?

 

Yea, that sounds like a good plan of attack. I was already going to use heat and a vice but I hadn't yet figured out what other tools to throw in there. A pipe or beat/massage it back with a hammer/mallot. Thanks!

 

i wouldnt try to use any impact force. just use a pipe to bend it slowly.

 

i had my kunckle bent to correct my camber. what they do is bolt a BFing steel plate up to your brakes where your wheels normally go. and then they wedge a hydralic press almost like a bottle jack inbetween the plate and the where the uca bolts up and they pump away till you get what you need.


in your case, to bend it back..........i think the pipe thing will work, but im not sure about the heating up part because doesn't that weakin the metal?

 

Yea, I would think heating may weaken the metal some. But I know me putting a metal pipe on the end and just trying to bend it wouldn't work being I'm probably not near strong enough. So the heat would be you use to help bend it.

Maybe I can divise something what you mentioned above. A steel plate that bolts to the hub and use a jack or something hydralic to push it back where it needs to be.

 

bend it back.

it's an old road racing trick to get the camber you need.

it's only a couple of degrees, so no big deal.

 

GO for it!! Your only gonna learn one way. Kunckles are not the hardest thing to find. You can swap a new one on in very little time. Shouldnt be hard to find a used one, make sure the bearing in the replacement is good.

 

Thanks! I'll give it a try this weekend most likely.

The problem is 99-00 Si spindle are a little harder to come by around here. Will another model knuckle work? 94+ GSR or any others?

 

which side do you need?
i got a front gsr brake swap but i only need the passenger side because i got in an accicdent.

 

Ahh, dang. That's what I need is the passenger side.

I talked to my friend last night. He mentioned that he had a GSR front knuckle, just the knuckle and nothing else I could have. That would work correct? Any differance between that and the Si one?

Also, can you reuse the bearing or not?

 

Integra knuckles are taller than 99 Civic Si knuckles.

What you can do is look around Hondaland. Many other Hondas take very similar knuckles, meaning will accept the Civic bearing/hub. The CRX takes shorter knuckles. My dad's TL for example takes the same kinda knuckles but look like my 96 Civic knuckles...bent. There shorter. This would work to give more -camber, or to get closer to no camber on a slammed vehicle.

 

Try using a ex steering knuckle and install a si hub bearing on it. It should work.