My spouse spun out on an exit ramp yesterday and piled the '97 Nissan Altima's rear end up onto a guardrail. She's fine but the car's condition is debatable. Let me describe the situation (in excruciating detail) and then ask for your advice.
It was a dark & stormy night. She's a very cautious driver and she says she was probably only doing 25-30 mph on the exit (she'd just passed a speed trap so she'd slowed down even more than the exit usually warrants). About halfway around the uphill circle (to the right) the front end started hydroplaning and drifting left. She turned the wheel more to the right and broke the hydroplane but of course the car immediately whipped clockwise 180 degrees. She says she straightened out the wheel but she never got around to braking before the car's rear end rode up on the guardrail.
The car is a front-wheel drive with a five-speed stick shift, power steering, & ABS (not that the ABS had a chance to do its job). The guardrail crumpled the bottom of the muffler and lifted the car up by the struts going to the rear wheels. A guardrail section also scraped the body under the left-hand side (below the driver's seat) and crushed a small hollow metal beam but it didn't appear to crumple any brake lines or fuel lines. The front left wheel fell into a concrete hole (just the right size!) and the FR wheel dug itself in to the axle. So the car was completely off the ground when I arrived. And of course it was raining.
I dug out the FR wheel. I managed to jack the FL wheel above the hole and I supported the tire with a wood post (there were plenty of wood scraps laying around!). Then I used our trusty two-ton Taurus tank & a ratchet strap to pull the Altima down off the guardrail and back onto its own tires (which weren't even flat).
We local garage claims that the wheels & brakes are OK. The car runs fine, there are no drips or stains, and it's not losing any fluids. We've driven it at 60 mph and it doesn't pull or drift, the steering wheel doesn't shake, and the brakes don't pull or drag. The car doesn't seem to crab or to be visibly misaligned-- the rear wheels track through puddles right behind the front wheels. The hood was unlatched but it latched when I pushed it down. Heck, the tires don't even seem to be out of balance let alone misaligned.
The garage guys claim that they can't check the wheel alignment because the rear frame is bent up and to one (unspecified) side. They admit that they don't have any frame-alignment skills but they're probably right about the bending-- I'd opened the Altima's trunk and now it won't latch shut.
We don't care about the cosmetic scrapes & dings. I can replace the muffler and I think I can get the trunk to latch shut again (or else I'll use a bungee cord). We bought the car in cherry condition a couple years ago and now it has about 80K on it, which means we'd drive it on this island for another couple decades. The only other owner was the proverbial little old lady who ran to the dealership at the first hiccup and always paid them to do every bit of recommended maintenance. (She had the receipts to prove it, and CARFAX validated the VIN history.) This is the first "adult" car we've ever owned and it's been absolutely flawless. OTOH we don't carry collision insurance and we only have $7K into it so we're reluctant to pay a lot for repairs when we could easily replace the car for under $10K.
Any advice on what I should discuss with a frame shop? Despite being symptom-free, is the car too dangerous to drive?? Is there anything else we should be watching out for? What's the worst that could happen, hypothetically speaking, if we continued to drive it 2-3K miles/year for the next 10-15 years without aligning the frame?
It was a dark & stormy night. She's a very cautious driver and she says she was probably only doing 25-30 mph on the exit (she'd just passed a speed trap so she'd slowed down even more than the exit usually warrants). About halfway around the uphill circle (to the right) the front end started hydroplaning and drifting left. She turned the wheel more to the right and broke the hydroplane but of course the car immediately whipped clockwise 180 degrees. She says she straightened out the wheel but she never got around to braking before the car's rear end rode up on the guardrail.
The car is a front-wheel drive with a five-speed stick shift, power steering, & ABS (not that the ABS had a chance to do its job). The guardrail crumpled the bottom of the muffler and lifted the car up by the struts going to the rear wheels. A guardrail section also scraped the body under the left-hand side (below the driver's seat) and crushed a small hollow metal beam but it didn't appear to crumple any brake lines or fuel lines. The front left wheel fell into a concrete hole (just the right size!) and the FR wheel dug itself in to the axle. So the car was completely off the ground when I arrived. And of course it was raining.
I dug out the FR wheel. I managed to jack the FL wheel above the hole and I supported the tire with a wood post (there were plenty of wood scraps laying around!). Then I used our trusty two-ton Taurus tank & a ratchet strap to pull the Altima down off the guardrail and back onto its own tires (which weren't even flat).
We local garage claims that the wheels & brakes are OK. The car runs fine, there are no drips or stains, and it's not losing any fluids. We've driven it at 60 mph and it doesn't pull or drift, the steering wheel doesn't shake, and the brakes don't pull or drag. The car doesn't seem to crab or to be visibly misaligned-- the rear wheels track through puddles right behind the front wheels. The hood was unlatched but it latched when I pushed it down. Heck, the tires don't even seem to be out of balance let alone misaligned.
The garage guys claim that they can't check the wheel alignment because the rear frame is bent up and to one (unspecified) side. They admit that they don't have any frame-alignment skills but they're probably right about the bending-- I'd opened the Altima's trunk and now it won't latch shut.
We don't care about the cosmetic scrapes & dings. I can replace the muffler and I think I can get the trunk to latch shut again (or else I'll use a bungee cord). We bought the car in cherry condition a couple years ago and now it has about 80K on it, which means we'd drive it on this island for another couple decades. The only other owner was the proverbial little old lady who ran to the dealership at the first hiccup and always paid them to do every bit of recommended maintenance. (She had the receipts to prove it, and CARFAX validated the VIN history.) This is the first "adult" car we've ever owned and it's been absolutely flawless. OTOH we don't carry collision insurance and we only have $7K into it so we're reluctant to pay a lot for repairs when we could easily replace the car for under $10K.
Any advice on what I should discuss with a frame shop? Despite being symptom-free, is the car too dangerous to drive?? Is there anything else we should be watching out for? What's the worst that could happen, hypothetically speaking, if we continued to drive it 2-3K miles/year for the next 10-15 years without aligning the frame?
) I'd say that the damage is limited to the unibody framing on the wheel well on the side that you'd probably expect it to be...the one that was hung up. A very good body shop with experience willl probably knock it back into approximately the same shape it was before the accident for something in the sub $1000 range. You wont know the diff. Front end screwups are another matter; trailing problems arent that bad.
