frame damamge?

[meohmy01]

last night i wrecked my new 3g. i've owned the car for only 13 days so i'm a little pissed off. what i did was lose control of the car and crash into a hill. there isn't a single dent on the car but the front end is a little out of wack. the driver's side corner appears to be pushed back and to the passenger side. the gap is off about 3/8 to 1/2 of an inch. is this frame damage? any idea if it's repairable?. the only other thing i noticed is that the passenger side tire is tilted in at the top maybe a half inch or so.

[NXRacer]

how did you crash into a hill? why didnt you just drive up it?? :D j/k that sucks maing.

the damage is probably just your bumper support and can be easily fixed by getting a new support or pulling out your old one.

[meohmy01]

it's the hood that is off. and you can see a small little kink in the upper core support where the fender and headlight assemply meets up.

[NXRacer]

sounds like it might be pushed down a little bit. You might be able to take it to a body shop and see if the damage is worth worrying about.

[meohmy01]

i've been told it can only be fixed with a frame machine. anyone here ever fixed frame damage successfully with alternative methods? (i.e. chain and tree)

[zero.counter]

One of the quickest ways to verify major fram damage is to park in a clean driveway and wet only the tires. Now roll the car forward in a straight line. Stop about 20 feet from where you started and look at the tread marks. If the lines are not matching up perfectly or even near perfect, you have some bad frame damage. This is an old trick I learned from a body shop.

[meohmy01]

i'll try that. but it's more of just a minor frame sway

[NXRacer]

i did some frame damage to my car and i was able to pull out the front end by pulling out the headlight assembly, drilling a hole through the frame, put a big bolt with a large washer on the back side, hook it up to a tree and pull back a little. Its ghetto back yard frame fixin, but it worked!

[meohmy01]

upon closer inspection today i realized that the whole thing was twisted. the front driver's side corner is bent up to the right and back a little bit. this weekend i'm going to try to pull it out so hopefully i won't do more damage then there already is. i just want it to look close to what it looked like when i bought the car 2 weeks ago when all of the bodylines were perfect.

where in the frame did you drill a hole? where is it best to pull it from?

[NXRacer]

just find a solid place to hook up to on the car. My headlight 'bucket' was all messed up so i pulled that out. dont pull from a place thats *thin* and weak or you'll do more damage then you already have. Behind the headlight is pretty solid and its not too hard to pull out the whole headlight assembly. just make sure you dont tweak it too much or else you'll screw up the headlight function.

[meohmy01]

the headlight? there's nothing wrong with the headlight. the frame is twisted. the entire structure of the front end is pushed over about a half of an inch.

also, any ideas what might cause the tire to be tilted in at the top. i replaced the upper control arm with the one off of my other car and it didn't do very much. nothing else looks bent so i'm stumped.

[NXRacer]

well if the front corner is bent in/down/up thats the most solid place to hook up to to straighten out.

as for the wheel problem i dunno. maybe having an alignment check will help you find the problem.

[meohmy01]

does anyone else know what would cause the wheel to lean in like that? i don't want this to be another junkyard 3g so i need to get this fixed