Rusted Axil Bolts

I was driving my 1999 Sanota and was making a right turn off the highway and
lost control of my steering power. The a-frame of my car went left and the
body of my car went right. The body fell off the frame due to the main frame
axil bolts and part of the a-frame rusting completely through. I had no
control of the car. Is this typical in Hyundai Sanotas? The wrecker service
said I was lucky I wasn't still on the highway, it could have caused me
serious injury. I keep my car in the garage, it never sits outside when I am
home. This seems like a very dangerous hazard and I cannot understand why
the a-frame and bolts would have gotten to the state of being rusted totally
through. In the process, of this happening, it also ruined my transmission.
Has this happened to anyone else? Although I was unable to move my car after
this happened it was still in gear which of course didn't work. When I tried
to put the gear shift in park, there were no gears, I just had to turn the
car off.

 

No - this is the first I've ever heard of such an event. If it were
typical, it would be big news.

Of course it's dangerous. Why did it happen? Who knows. Sometimes very
rare things happen.

No gears? Not sure what you mean by this. If you mean that you couldn't
move the shift lever, I'm not surprised. A drop to the road like this would
quite likely result in some sort of damage to linkages, etc.

 

Where do you live? Near the coast? In an area that applies lots of
salt to the roads in the winter? Is your garage heated (this isn't good
for cars driven in winter weather)?

I'm guessing there is a lot more to this story than you are telling us
so far.

Matt

 

Sounds like a fluke to me.

 

Not arguing the point, but why would a heated garage be bad in the
Winter? Heating lowers the relative humidity and helps the car dry out,
doesn't it?

Eric

 

Ice doesn't rust metal nearly as fast as water and salt that is encased
in ice rusts at a slower rate than salt water.

It is better to leave a snow and ice and salt covered car out in the
cold than the bring it in and warm up the ice and snow and salt and form
a nice solution to rust the car.


Matt

 

What's a Sanota?

--

 

I had something similar happen to a 1979 Fiat Strada when it was 3
years old. You don't see very many Strada's on the road these days...

--

 

Ditto - almost - I know that in upstate NY out attached garage is just
warm enough to melt the snow down to a nice brine. I expect a really
heated garage would then evaporate the brine down to salt. Brine is
the problem.

;-)

 

And what is an Axil bolt?

Matt

 

Matt,

I live in Indiana and yes they do at times have to apply lots of salt to the
roads but as well I wash my car often. My garage is not heated but it would
be warmer than sitting outside in the elements. I'm not quite sure what you
mean by more to this story than I am telling you. I had not had any
indication previous to this happening that there was something wrong with my
car. It was only minutes before it happened that I felt a pull to the right
on my steering wheel that something was not right. My first thought was that
the allignment was off but it was also pouring down rain at the time and
there was ponding on the highway. I'm not sure what else I can tell you, I
didn't realize there was a problem until it happened.

Mitzi

 

Most likely, the axle pulled out of the transmission or the inner cv joint
pulled apart.

 

I meant things like how many miles are on the car. I've seen 99 cars
with 300,000 miles with 200,000 of those on salty NY or PA roads. If
you wash your car often in the winter with salt on the roads, this is
NOT good for it. Adding water to the salt is a recipe for rust.

Matt

 

Axil bolts come on Sanotas, sometime they rust.

 

Where in upstate?

 

This was much more true in years past than it is now. Seldom do you see
much rust on cars even in NY where we use a lot of salt. Galvanized metals
and plastic fender liners have done much to make those problems more of a
thing of the past. We wash our cars regularly all winter long and we don't
suffer major rust problems. If we didn't wash our cars in the winter we'd
all be driving white cars. Today, the fears of heated garages, washing,
etc. are a non-entity. My garage is heated and we've never had a car suffer
any advanced rust problems.

 

down the road fro you - roughly rochester