The 16-year-old Sagitar has chassis problems, but the owner says it doesn't matter anymore!

An old Sagitar came into the factory for engine maintenance. The owner said it was a used car he bought last year, which can be considered as the first generation Sagitar. The vehicle has been in production for 16 years and has a total mileage of over 200000 kilometers.

Before maintenance, the car owner also said that the chassis always gives a feeling of uncontrollability, causing it to deviate when driving in a straight line and making abnormal noises when driving on bumpy roads. He wants to check where the problem is and how to repair it.

After maintaining the engine, the repairman conducted a comprehensive inspection of the chassis and found two very prominent issues. The first issue was that the lower control arm at the front of the chassis was damaged, and the second issue was that the stabilizer bar connecting rod at the rear of the chassis was damaged. It is precisely because of these two issues that a series of chassis failures have occurred.

There is an additional iron guard plate installed on the lower part of the front engine and gearbox. The guard plate was removed because the oil needs to be drained and the oil filter needs to be replaced. The structure of the front suspension in the above picture shows that the front subframe is a half frame design. Looking at the picture again, there is only a small amount of sludge on the outside of the engine, and there is no obvious oil or water leakage.

The inspection result of the front suspension is that there is a problem with the lower arm shown in the figure below. One end of it is connected to the steering knuckle through the lower arm ball joint, and the other side is connected to the subframe and the body through two rubber bushes

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The condition of the small and large rubber sleeves of the lower support arm is not good. As shown in the picture below, the center of the lower support arm's large sleeve is the lower support arm, and the gap between them is large. The rubber sleeve can no longer fix the middle lower support arm.

When driving on bumpy roads, the lower support arm bounces up and down with the road surface, and this large lining does not provide the necessary buffering effect, resulting in abnormal noise and looseness. When stepping on the brake, there will be a noticeable loosening sensation. This is a problem with the large lining of both lower support arms.

Take a look at the rear of the chassis. The arrow indicates a large fuel tank made of plastic material with many obvious scratches on the bottom, but there is no oil leakage.

Looking at the structure of the rear suspension, there is not much difference between it and the current Sagitar rear suspension structure, both are multi link independent suspensions.

When checking the rear suspension, we found a very special situation, as indicated by the arrow in the figure below. The ball joint of the rear stabilizer bar link has fallen off, which means that the stabilizer bar has been disassembled and cannot function properly on bumpy roads.

When our repairman pointed out these issues to the car owner, they said, 'It doesn't matter anymore.'. The owner's intention is that as long as it does not affect driving safety, does not throw me on the road, and does not want to interfere with it anymore, this car is almost scrapped and does not want to spend money on repairs. As long as it can be driven normally, it is fine and basically does not drive at high speeds.

The car owner also asked if it is possible to do four-wheel alignment for the car without replacing the parts. The repairman said that without repairing the faulty components of the chassis, the use of four-wheel alignment is not significant because the faulty components themselves can cause changes in chassis data and make driving difficult.

This is the problem found during the inspection of the Sagitar chassis. One thing needs to be praised: upon overall inspection, except for some parts of the chassis showing signs of rust, we did not find any rust on the body of the car. You should know that this is an old car from over ten years ago, and Volkswagen has done a good job in rust prevention on the body.