I had just left the collision center getting some rust damage repaired and hood painted with full front clearbra done on my Subaru. Car looked brand new. I got hit by a truck 2 minutes after leaving the collision center and the truck hit my wheel area and back quarter panel on the driver's side. My car has been repaired and wheel alignment done (oddly the right front wheel was totally out of alignment and the wheel that was hit wasn't totally out of specs). I'm then driving home and I'm noticing that whenever I take a left turn that same wheel area gives a ping sound like a rock is hitting metal.  Because the wheel had been removed, I retorqued the lugs, and retested and test drove it to the same sound. I removed the wheel and cleaned everything up with brake cleaner and retested and it's still the same on left turns. The odd thing is that when I'm taking slow left turns I don't hear the sound. 

This is the wheel that was in an accident? 
If this was an insurance job then I would take it back to the shop and ask them about it. 

1.  make sure the brake dust shield isn't bent or debris caught in it. 

2.  check brake pads and mating surface - maybe it's just light surface rust from sitting during the repair. 

3. check emergency brake adjustment

4.  if i had to guess after simple things are checked - wheel bearing or cv joint. 

You can get a ping like that if the bearing at the top of the strut tower isn't rotating, the strut spring winds up and maybe shifts a little.

Of course something left loose could do it too.

^^^^ if the strut was replaced/rebuilt - the conical spacer at the top may be flipped. narrow side must go up.

 

 

or maybe some odd brake dust shield issue?

Idosubaru, yes, this is the wheel that was hit. I've checked the brakes and cleaned everything and still the single ping/tick when taking corners at over 30kms/hr. The tick/ping sound only comes when taking corners faster and not from a slow start. The sound comes regardless if I'm braking or not.

1 Lucky Texan, the strut wasn't replaced/rebuilt in this case.

CNY_Dave, this is a good possibility. Something definitely could have been loosened during the accident. I checked into what you said about the bearing/mount and found a video with a guy having the same problem. People are telling him by the sound that it's the bearing/mount after he'd just replaced his struts and he's not believing that's the problem. The sound coming from his car is identical to mine, so I'm going with you and the majority on that site. I'll take the car in to my friend this week and let you know.

Thank you all for your help.

Just a quick question before I take the car in.

I was listening for noises after the car was hit and I heard nothing until after I had the wheel alignment done. Is it possible that one of the bolts didn't get torqued correctly during the alignment process?

1 hour ago, coryl said:

Just a quick question before I take the car in.

I was listening for noises after the car was hit and I heard nothing until after I had the wheel alignment done. Is it possible that one of the bolts didn't get torqued correctly during the alignment process?

That's always a possibility....

Problem solved and I can hardly believe what was the problem...

I get to the dealership and my friend takes the car for a test drive and he can hear nothing. So I get in the car with him and eventually he can hear the ping sound but very faintly yet can't distinguish where it's coming from. Next, one of the girls at the dealership gets in the car with me on my request, because I read somewhere that women hear things differently than guys do, and she hears the pings from the back seat but thinks it's coming from the front of the vehicle and not from the back where the wheel was hit and so as I'm listening to it closer I now agree with her. Next, a tech gets into the back seat and he can hear the pings too and thinks it's coming from the front wheel too, so now we are all in agreement it's coming from the front drivers side area. The car is put up on the hoist and the front wheel won't make the ping noise when turned and nothing is looking like it's catching on anything. The tech then brings the car down and gets into the front seat and takes the car off on his own. He comes back with a big smile on his face saying that he's figured it out and it's "coming from the door" and starts to swing open and shut the driver's side door and something's banging around inside so we take the door apart. The metal rod connecting to the lock mechanism had come apart, so when taking fast left turns it would hit once against the metal inside the door but couldn't hit anything metal when swinging in the opposite direction taking right turns.

I'm so happy that it wasn't anything major with the suspension. I'm also very happy that the problem was figured out before the fob stopped working or the car alarm went off and then the key in the driver's side door wouldn't work to open the door or to shut off the alarm which would have undoubtedly been at minus 40C in winter!

Sounds similar to the old 'marble in the ash-tray' symptom.

On 8/30/2018 at 10:41 PM, forester2002s said:

Sounds similar to the old 'marble in the ash-tray' symptom.

I can't believe it still but I'm so happy. If you can believe it, even when the tech said he knew the problem was in the door, I initally thought to myself that this must be a secondary problem. Once we believe that it's a problem with the suspension, etc,  and especially when there was a car accident, you keep focused on that belief unfortunately which would have cost me a bundle of money to figure out had it not been for my friends. 

I bought pizza and bought presents to thank everyone at the dealership. That would have been a huge cost for me I know to Figure it out. I so thank them!

Edited September 9, 20187 yr by coryl

Well, I have many stories connected with the accidents and I also had problems with these strange sounds. For example, once I was driving on a green light, and Uber was trying to pass a red. In the next moment I got hit and my right wheel was badly damaged. Of course, I started to call my insurance company and I was already thinking about hiring an uber accident attorney los Angeles. The truth was on my side, so they I got my money and repaired the car. But soon I also began to hear a similar scratch, and I don't know what to do with it. No one can tell what the matter is ...

Edited September 9, 20205 yr by shonwhi