got into an accident a couple months ago, and my car is finally almost ready

i was thinking... if i had a weaker rim, would i have damaged my suspension as bad? if you look at the first pic, an arm snapped and all of the others are bent... the coilover can speak for itself.

when the damper shaft snapped from the wheel hitting it after the arm broke, the spring somehow flew out of the fender well, bounced off of the freeway barrier and hit my door 3 inches below the window. left a bad dent on the door shaped like a spring.... half a foot higher and i would've gotten glass and a spring in the face

i had to replace the whole front left suspension, a new coilover, and a new set of rims. maybe if the wheel were weaker and absorbed more impact i would have saved a few bucks

 

no. that doesn't seem logical.

was your tire stretched? was it a defect in the suspension design?

 

no, tire is was not stretched, it looks like that because the lip of the wheel is pushed in, pushing the tire in. i wouldn't know if the arm was defective... i was going about 60-70mph when the wheel impacted the wall

 

the arm or the coilover shaft?

 

How did you come to the conclusion that a stronger wheel "absorbs" less impact than a weaker wheel?

 

it is common practice for oe's to make suspension parts that absorb impact to prevent far costlier parts from being damaged on smaller impacts. check out a camber arm on a E36/46--super flimsy but saves the subframe on mild impacts. the same could be said about a wheel however if the weaker wheel were to break who knows what other kinds of damage that would cause.

i would never shy away from a quality wheel due to the chances of hitting a pot hole are far greater than railing a curb--in which case i would not want my wheel breaking.

 

well i wouldn't say that the coilover shaft was defective, though a thicker shaft probably would have held up better

i was thinking along the same lines as crumple zones on cars these days, they are designed to crumple to absorb the energy from a collision, which significantly decreases the energy on the passengers. if the wheel were to bend and give, the suspension would sustain less energy since some of it went into bending the wheel. since the wheel is so strong and did not give, most of the energy just transfered to the suspension.... right? or am i missing something?

 

I dont think so.

 

Forged FTW. Suspension is meant to take a beating...from normal driving. when you slide sideways into a curb, or something else a suspension isn't made to take you will damage it. Suspensions will "collapse" in a collision to save the car as a whole. Engineering sure is silly huh?

 

don't get me wrong, i love forged rims and this accident shows how strong they are, i was just wondering if i didn't have these rims would my suspension have suffered so much damage.

 

Accidents just screw stuff up , no telling what would have happened.

 

It is possible that even more damage could have occured with "weaker" rims. But like the poster above me has said, who knows?

 

It's obvious your suspension was doomed the moment you lost it.

OE wheel standards are way WAY higher than the cheap TireRack/discount supplier wheels you are referring to. Any OE wheels would have behaved the same as your forged wheels.