Subaruh-oh

May 21, 2024 10:14 PM

Car people, help. The two front control arms on my 2017 Subaru Forester apparently need replacing. This would be fine, except I have to make a 500 mile roundtrip this weekend. Should I?

Not much more to add, other than during maintenance this week for something unrelated the mechanic I use noticed the problem and wrote on my invoice "Front control arms need replacing, bushing making noise." (I trust this mechanic, by the way.)

Driving at ~100kph makes a fetching bonk-ba-donk-ba-dunk sound until I slightly rotate the steering wheel, then it stops. I had not noticed this before now because in Toronto traffic it is largely impossible to drive faster than 14kph.

Should I make alternative arrangements for transport? Or is everything going to be fine and my car won't fall apart like Peter Perfect in Wacky Races. I won't be able to get into this mechanic for a week or two.

posted by rpophessagr to Grab Bag (7 answers total)

It's really up to you risk tolerance. It's unlikely a worn bushing will suddenly fail to the point it causes a crash. People drive cars around with every piece of rubber rotted out for tens of thousands of miles every day. It's more annoying than dangerous, However, there is some small element of risk in having your steering be more sloppy than usual.

Personally, I'd drive it unless something felt deeply wrong, but if you'll be worrying about it the entire time, rent a car or whatever. There's no sense in giving yourself heartburn over something money can easily fix, assuming you have the money.
posted by wierdo at 12:21 AM on May 22 [1 favorite]

Ask your mechanic!
posted by lulu68 at 1:34 AM on May 22 [10 favorites]

If it was deeply unsafe, the mechanic wouldn't have just written it on an invoice and let you drive the car away.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:11 AM on May 22 [2 favorites]

My daughter had a control arm fail on a Subaru Impreza - spun out on a highway, hit the median and thanks to Subaru's great safety features wasn't badly hurt. The car was totaled. Remarkably this was at rush hour and no one else hit them - it could have been so much worse.

I would rent a car or travel some other way.
posted by leslies at 7:00 AM on May 22 [1 favorite]

If it were my mechanic, I'd call them up and ask if this is a "must do before such a trip" need or "sometime this year" fix.
posted by advicepig at 8:44 AM on May 22 [1 favorite]

Nth-ing to call your trusted mechanic and ask if you need to be concerned about that with this road trip in context, and also what he recommends the timeline to be for that repair to be completed.
posted by ApathyGirl at 9:49 AM on May 22 [1 favorite]

I personally would be OK driving a car with a little front control arm bushing noise, but be prepared for the little bushing noise to become the world's most annoying and loud car squeak during your trip.
posted by zippy at 6:17 PM on May 22