Help: 17" Speedline Wheel Hitting Front Control Arm Far Right Turn
 

I've been trying to figure out what's been going on with my front suspension for a while.

Background: 2.5 years ago, I had a catastrophic wheel bearing failure on the front passenger side while on the freeway. This lead to failure of the spindle and the 17" Speedline/Rotor assembly started to separate from the spindle. The inner surface of the Speedline has a 360 score mark from rubbing against the caliper. Luckily, this was the limited extent of damage as I was on I-5 on my way to San Diego and things could have been much worse for not only the Saleen, but also myself if the wheel actually did completely separate from the car!


Parts replaced: Rotor, caliper, wheel bearings (inner/outer), seals, Ford 87 5.0 spindle from a auto-parts.com recycler. Everything put back together and car was ready to roll. Then, I did start to notice that whenever I steered the car to the far right, the wheel would grind against the body. I did an inspection and couldn't figure out where it was hitting.

During an oil change at my tire shop, I asked them to check it out. They showed me that the inner lip of the Speedline wheel was hitting against the lower control arm. Their solution- don't crank it to the far right.


My regular Mustang mechanic said that the bushings and balljoints where shot and the looseness is probably why it was hitting the control arm. I ordered new Ford Racing Lower control arm kit (and another spindle- just in case). New inner/outer bearings, seals, new control arms, new end links, new urethane front sway bar mount bushings and the front end was transformed to a new car!

Unfortunately, it still hits the front control arm with far right turns. [I had a remanufactured steering rack/new inner and outer tie rods, new Koni struts, urethane spring isolators installed just prior to the catastrophic wheel bearing failure]. I took off the clamp for the dust boot and noticed that there was one 1 steering rack limiter on the driverside. I didn't check the passenger side thinking that would be for the far left turning which has never been an issue. I suppose I will take off the boot on passenger side and see if it's also missing 1 of the steering limiter washers].

Other than that, any one have thoughts on what might be causing this? Alignment and tire wear has been perfectly even as well and car drives smooth. 225/45/17 Michelin Pilot Sports on the front.

Thanks in advance.

Depending on the offset and widths of the speedline wheels you have you will need to add (1) nylon rack spacer per side for a total of 2 on each side...(You don't want to add too many it will reduce your turning radius) You probably had 2 on your old rack and the new one came with one.Also you may have been running more negative camber before(negative camber will help wider wheels clear control arms) I would have the alignment spec's checked on both sides(you can have even tire ware and it can drive fine but the camber could still be slightly off causing it to rub on the control arm .I would run a little sandpaper over the lip of the damaged speedline wheel 600 grit to make sure its nice and smooth and also where it was hitting to clean it up.