Steering locks when braking

[callthemall]

Hey everyone, this is my first time posting here. I've had my 79 Fiat Spider since November of last year. It came with a few quirks here and there but what 32 year old car doesn't?

Anyways there's one issue that has been concerning me for a while (besides the timing belt, but that's a different story). Whenever I am braking, say, approaching a corner, my steering with drastically stiffen, and I only have a limited range left and right before it feels like something is binding, and I can't steer past that binding point while under braking. If I let my foot off the brake, the steering returns to normal. When under braking, if I try hard to steer (usually left) past the binding point I can hear the left tire start to squeal a little bit, so I think the binding may be related more to one side than the other, as it is most prominent when turning left. The tie rod ends do run fairly close to the control arm bolt ends, and last time I fixed this issue I spun the tie rod end clamp bolts around so they wouldn't rub against the control arm. But sure enough, the problem came back, which makes me believe it's a little more severe than just a couple bolts rubbing.

Today I brought the car into my auto tech class (I'm 19 by the way, 5th year in high school) and took a look at the control arm bolts. A lot of them were loose on the right side, I ended up doing close to the same thing as this article (in terms of repair, not the side affects) http://www.fiatspider.com/f08/viewtopic ... 14&t=13907 Before tightening everything I wiggled the control arm around and it had fairly significant play. I brought my shop teacher over and showed him the control arm, and as I moved it, he noticed the bolt housing (on the frame) had a crack in it and was moving. We're going to look into welding it temporarily on Friday, then I'll work on it over the winter. This is purely added speculations though, tightening the bolts (which is what I did in the end) did not help or worsen the problem.

I'll try and get pictures of it tomorrow, when it's not midnight...

[So Cal Mark]

with considerable play in the front end, it's conceivable that the alignment changes drastically when braking so that you have gobs of toe-out. I'd repair that crossmember before doing anything else

[callthemall]

Thanks mark, I brought it in to take a look today. We held the brakes on and pushed it back and forth when someone was watching the suspension. Turns out the entire subframe was moving. We raised it up and took a look, and noticed the mounts for the subframe on the frame were completely ripped out. I have some pictures just I don't know how to post them from my iPod. Anyways the point is I have a lot of work and/or money ahead of me! I took the insurance off today too as it'll be off for a while.

[kmead]

Bummer! Sorry to hear that.

[So Cal Mark]

a couple of owners have documented their frame repairs, try a search