Is my car safe to drive after a hard hit on the curb?
I had a bit of a scary moment last night that I'm still replaying in my head. I was driving home in the rain, you know how the roads get here when it actually rains, everyone forgets how to drive, and I hit a massive puddle that must have been hiding a huge pothole or something because there was this massive bang from the front passenger side. I pulled over straight away to check and the tyre wasn't flat or anything, but the impact was so hard that I'm genuinely worried I might have bent something in the suspension or worse. The car drives fine for the most part, but I feel like there's a very slight pull to the right now and maybe a tiny vibration at high speeds that wasn't there before. My wife thinks I'm overthinking it and says if the tyre looks fine, it's probably nothing, but I can't shake this feeling that something is wrong underneath. I've been reading up on what kind of damage can happen from hitting something hard like that, and the more I read, the more concerned I get. Apparently even if the wheel alignment seems okay, the subframe or control arms can get bent and cause issues down the road that aren't immediately obvious. I found a really helpful article that's basically about understanding whether chassis damage can be fixed and it explained that sometimes what looks like a simple alignment issue can actually be a sign of deeper structural problems that need proper measuring equipment to detect. I'm thinking I should get the car up on a lift and have someone who actually knows what they're looking at inspect the underside properly rather than just trusting that everything is fine. Has anyone here had a similar experience where a hard impact ended up causing hidden damage that wasn't obvious at first glance? I'd rather catch it now before it turns into a bigger problem. Would really appreciate any advice from people who've been through this.