Front Right side of Car Completely collapsed.
 

The right side of the fender on my 83 911sc has completely collapsed over the tire. The car has been sitting for 2 weeks. any ideas? the shocks are about 1 year old. thanks.

Torsion bar snapped?

On-ramp

With the lack of info about the circumstances my guess would be a broken torsion bar, I would not look at the shocks.

Hope this helps

Cheers

Ray

Does it look anything like this?
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploads/LoweredAA.jpg

Read all about it.

yes, exactly!

If it is a broken t-bar then the swap is fairly easy. The hardest part I found was getting the sway-bar and belly pan back in place.

Failure mode
 

I had a similar failure once. The torsion bar was still good what had broken was the cast adjustment piece on the end of the torsion bar. The piece the adjustment screw pushes on. I was in Italy at the time and the Italions blamed it on bad Spanish road engineering. They said this was a common failure on 911.

Jacked the car up today. The torsion bar looked ok. Could it be the shock? it's less than 2 years old, Bilstein sport shock, any stories of one failing?
Everything else looked normal. I'm puzzled.

The shock does not carry weight.

Either the T-bar, or your pan completely rusted through. Did you pull the bar out?

Maybe you were looking at the front sway bar instead? You have to look at the rear end of the torsion bar and the adjusting cap. With load off the front end, see if you can wiggle the end of the bar with a pair of large channelock pliers. If truly broken, it should slide right out.

See archives or PParts tech section for an exploded view of the front end.

Sherwood

the shock doesn't carry weight? what keeps the car up from hitting the ground? take away all 4 shocks and the car drops down.
if the shock was toast, wouldn't it sink like that too?

Only if you remove the torsion bars. As was mentioned - shocks don't carry any load.

Mike

on-ramp: This is correct: Shocks do not carry weight; neither does the sway-bar. Torsion bars hold the weight instead of springs.
You have to remove the adjuster assembly which holds the front of the t-bar and pull the t-bar out for inspection. Most likely it is broken and you have to fish for the broken piece inside.
Replace BOTH sides with new ones, not just one side!
Use lube on the splines when installing.
If the t-bar is good, remember to put it back the same way; do not switch ends!