I just inherited an 05 MC. This car is nicely loaded and the most fun vehicle I've ever owned. Can't emphasize how much I love it.
But, I've been trying to get a pull to the left fixed and have been told that the frame has been bent by a hard impact. I know that it's been in an accident and had nearly $5k of repairs done on it, so it is quite possible the frame was bent
I Love This Car!
So, my choices are to:
1) Fix the frame? Can that be done successfully? I love this car so much I'm thinking of owning it forever.
2) Trade it in for a new one - I'm sure I could get the dealership to give me a small trade in credit for a new 06 or 07.
2b) keep this one and just drive it until the 07 are available.

My exact questions:
Can you fix a bent frame successfully at all?
If I plan on keeping this car "forever", will it be OK to fix the frame and the car will be safe and last?
If I plan on keeping this car "forever", should I just get a new one anyway?
The way the inheritance is going to work out, I could swing the $ for a new one, but I'd rather save money and I really love this exact car, it not only is perfect in nearly every way, it has sentimental value.

Thanks, and I hope one way or the other, I’ll be hanging around this forum for awhile.

 

I'm definately NOT an expert here, but I have many opinions.... To the best of my knowledge, these little go carts don't sit on a frame, they are unibody construction. We totalled an SUV a few years ago, although we still drove it from the scene of the accident to the auto body shop, where we were told that both the frame and body were bent, so game over. It is my understanding that once a unibody car is bent, it will never be the same. You might want to check to make sure that the title is OK, not salvaged. If it shows a salvaged title, you will have a hard time renewing the registration.

Doesn't answer all your questions, but homer is not the sharpest knife in the drawer....

 

I used to be an insurance adjuster and have extensive training on auto repair as well as many hours doing repair studies in body shops so I'm as qualified as anyone to talk about this.

The term "frame" is somewhat misleading since it's used in the wrong scenarios usually. Old cars (and most modern pickup trucks and some SUVs) used to be built with a frame and the body bolted onto it. The frame in this scenario is something that basically looks like a steel ladder laying flat with all of the suspension and body pieces bolted to it. Modern cars (since the 50's) have mostly been "unibody" construction. That is, they have a steel passenger "cage" that the rear suspension and doors and glass are bolted to and the front suspension is mounted either to unibody pieces that bolt onto the cage or it has a separate "subframe" that bolts to the cage and the front suspension and engine/tranny bolt onto that. The Mini is a true unibody car with the entire passenger cage and front "frame" all being factory welded as separate pieces into one, solid entity and then the bonnet cover, fenders, glass, suspension and engine all bolted onto that.

As far as repair goes, a unibody car can be repaired to factory specs and it's done every day. However it has to be done by a qualified shop with the right training and equipment. Most reputable shops these days fit this description. The process is basically this. The strap your car onto a frame rack (some are equipped with laser measurement devices to locate important suspension and engine mounting points for accuracy) and then the car is disassembled to the point that all of the damage is accessible. Any piece of the welded structure that is too badly damaged to repair is cut out and replaced. All other parts are repaired. This involves essentially hooking up a hydraulic ram to the affected area and pulling the damaged part out to factory specs in the direction opposite from which it was impacted. It sounds scary but it is done every day and is perfectly acceptable. Then factory corrosion protection is restored inside closed metal unibody members using applicators with small nozzles and everything is remeasured as it's reassembled to make sure it's within factory specs (which these days is very exacting specification... around 2 or 3 millimeters for almost every manufacturer). All parts are refinished and reassembled and then the front suspension is realligned and that's pretty much it.

If you are experiencing pulling or some other handling issue after this is completed, then something was not done right. It can probably be fixed by a qualified shop but it will cost some money and time. I can tell you that most shops hate redoing another shops shoddy work but money will usually take care of that. It all comes down to how much time and money you are willing to give up. I would have it assessed by a good, reputable body shop to find out if this is a reasonable approach (call your insurance company for recommendations... they know the good ones).

Hope this helps!

 

^^It's just a shoddy repair job.

Do not try and repair the frame--there is no frame.

That's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth. Then you'll see, that it is not the frame that bends, it is only yourself!

 

Thanks SeattleMiniMan!

Homer is now smarter than a few minutes ago!

 

So what is Homer going to do?

 

It's nap time.

 

Thanks Homer and Seattle,
I had found some of that out, brought it in to the high-end body shop, and they told me that the frame wasn't bent because there isn't one. Guess that's why you take a great car to a good place, not Firestone.
They are going to take it in and put it on the frame rack Thursday and let me know what they find. A 30 min inspection found nothing, so they are hopefull that it isn't going to be too bad.
Looks like I'll have this car for a long time.

 

Putting it on a frame rack at a competent shop is a very wise move. They will measure it 6 ways to Sunday & back again to make sure everything is squared up the way it's supposed to be. If not they should be able to straighten it out for you. In the long run this will save you a lot of time & grief.

 

SeattleMiniMan is right on. I rebuild wrecks as a hobby and did an '02 last winter. A good shop can square it all up. After mine was done, the alignment still showed bad and my great alignment shop sguy uggested the strut could be bent. I'd had it out and in once and never noticed a problem with it so i was skeptical, but i broke down and took it out again and sure enough, there was a very small kink in it where the knuckle attaches. The strut was a bit over $100, not bad, plus a realignment. So it could even be something simple like that. And hitting a curb hard could do that (with an associated broken wheel!), not just a serious accident. Let us know what you find out.

 

I took it to the high-end frame/body/alignment shop in town (the one with laser guides, etc). They say there is nothing wrong with the body, that the McPhersons (sp?) strut and knuckle probably need replaced. They can't find anything, though. They agree, as does everyone else, that the car pulls to the left and no amount of aligning it seems to help. So, lets hope the strut/knuckle replacement does the job.
Also, it has a great deal of odd tire wear, due to the accident and the pulling, I suspect.
So, I'm trying to decide if I should also just spring for new tires all around. It's not that the tires need replaced, its just that they have odd wear patterns.
It also turns out that the accident it was in was just a hard impact with a curb, must have been a very hard impact. The entire left side of the suspension system was replaced by my dad's dealer, everything except the strut, so I bet they just missed that.

 

i hit a curb once...the unibody frame was ok, but the strut, knuckle, and control arm were all bent. after replacement and alignment, the car tracked straight.

 

Seattleminiman, you and I may know each other. I was in the repair biz in the north end from 1988 thru 2001. Also adjusted for Farmers and Metlife.
Sorry for the sidetrack; what I haven't seen mentioned so far is whether or not insurance paid for the major repair. If so, then you may be able to get them to pick up the tab for the unfinished repairs.
If you can find relevant claim info, see if your repair shop will go to bat for you with the insurance co.
Worth a shot, no?

 

For what it's worth, Seattle man is right on in my opinion. I was t-boned thru an intersection when a 02 civic ran her stop sign (niether of us took our foot of the gas) and in the end it came to $12,344 (not including the bill for the two months of the rental car). That was the hardest two months ever! Anyway, spot welding a couple new cage peices was needed and they measured using lasers... It worked out well. You can check out my gallery and see for your self. Thanks, I hope it works out for you and I definetly support getting the frame replaced... if you can or really need to. Thanks again,
Spade

 

Good to hear it may just be suspension related. Lots of times supplemental hard to find damage is uncovered after a road test, although they should have caught that in the alignment.

Off topic - 3 cocinas - are you an IA? Or did you work for those companies as an employee? Perhaps we know each other after all as I adjusted all of those years in and around NW WA.