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I wanted to make this thread because I couldn't find anything specific to our situation. Long story short my fiancé sideswiped a parking garage column and aside from their being a scratch and dent on the rear right door, the steering wheel was a couple degrees out place like when your car needs an alignment and immediately began to get a "ESP currently not available", "active brake assist functions limited", and "blind spot assist inoperative" messages on her dashboard which confused me a bit because the damage is nowhere near any of those sensors. I then started inspecting the damage a bit more and noticed some column paint on the rear right tire with the wheel "toeing- out" about an inch. I then began looking at the suspension parts and saw that the "lateral arm" washer and bushing on the side connected to the sub frame, slid all the way over to one side, but didn't see anything else. From what I've gathered online it seems that the suspension is messing with the cars "steering angle sensor" located behind the steering wheel but i am not 100% sure. So my question is could this be the reason all those driver assist options are unavailable? Could I simply go get an alignment to fix the sensor problem or would I have to get the lateral arm put back into its original placement and THEN get an alignment? from what saw I don't think it can be anything else but if anyone has any ideas id appreciate the input. At first glance It looked like an easy enough job/fix and was temped to lift the car up my self, loosen the bolt, move the lateral arm back into place, and tighten it back up. But i then came across torque specs that include angles, for example i believe it said "80nm 120 degrees" for that specific bolt which lowered my confidence in trying to fix it my self. I don't want to take it in and have a shop try to pull a fast one on me by charging me an arm and a leg if the issue can be fixed by a simple alignment
thank you in advance to anyone that takes time to give me ideas/suggestions door frame damage and wheel toeing outward
I had a nearly identical encounter with a parking garage column that refused to move out of my way in my E Class. I don’t think a simple 4 wheel alignment will fix the problem. With that one point moved so far out of position, every other mounting point is probably affected. The dealer said my car was trash and couldn’t be fixed. You need to find an independent shop with a setup that allows them to do point-to-point measurements to get everything back onto square then do the alignment. I used a shop that had a frame brace in case the unit body had be knocked out of alignment, which luckily it wasn’t. There was no other work needed beyond clearing the trouble codes. The work was about 5x the cost of a 4 wheel alignment at the dealer.