My nearside rear wheel took an impact during an accident, leaving the wheel pointing at a funny angle. Took it to my mechanic and they suggested it could be any number of suspension parts that were bent, or the hub itself, and that I could go through the time, effort, and money of replacing everything, and it could still not drive right because the subframe could be bent slightly.
In a bit of a tricky position then. It’s a 1998 Sport in green, great engine health and a few nice extras I’ve recently added, importantly no rust showing anywhere. That along with its 3 owners and full Mazda history make it not so much of a scrapper to me but it’s probably still only worth £2000-£3000 before the accident being a MK2 though. There is also a scrape all down the NS rear and a small dent which would need sorting.
What would you do? Start replacing suspension and see what happens? Cut your losses? Part out the car?
I’ve seen enough videos of damaged/salvaged vehicles to make an assumption that until you’ve had a proper inspection done who knows what’s involved to make good. And sometimes it’s only when the car is being stripped it highlights other problems not known at first inspection.
Best tell us where are you, that’ll probably help in pointing you in the right direction for a proper and probably specialist help?
Initially I didn’t want to go down the claim route as I hope it would be more straight forward to get it sorted myself but obviously rethinking that now!
I’m in Cheltenham Gloucestershire, that’s the thing, it could be something relatively small or a whole lot more, my local garage didn’t really want to know. Said it could be a lot of work to no real avail.
Can’t help with any garage in that area I’m afraid.
Myself I’d be taking the wheel of and inspecting it, gives an idea of any visible damage. It could be all the link arms, suspension and mounting distorted and who knows drive and diff damage?
Add paintwork and it gets very expensive, if of course you can’t do it yourself (examine the damage) then you are at the mercy of a garage.
The car will almost certainly be written off (assessed as uneconomical to repair) by the insurance company. You then have the option of buying it back from them at scrap value.
Having gone down this route with my 2005 NB recently, you need to be aware that the resale value of the car will be less, and come re-insurance time your premium will go up. You also need to report the write-off status to the DVLC (be prepared for hours of fun there). The insurance company may also require you to have the car MOT’d to assess its roadworthiness after you get it repaired
I took all that on the chin because my car is low mileage and in great condition and has sentimental value, but if I’d known it was going to be such a faff, and that the car would be branded for life as a Cat-N write off (despite only non-structural superficial body panel damage) I would have sucked it up, kept the insurance company out of it, and paid for the repair myself rather than accepting a settlement sum from them.
The car is a keeper, I’m 72, so it’ll either see me out or dissolve into rust in my drive first. If your car doesn’t have that sentimental value to you, take my advice and walk away. I’m not going to advise you to fix it yourself because if it has structural damage it may be unsafe to do that. I was entirely the innocent party in my accident but if your car is worth less than the insurance company says it’ll cost to repair it, you’re in for a proper hassle.
I agree. As soon as the insurer gets involved the car will be categorised for sure at least or you can say goodbye to it at worst. If you love the car consider getting it repaired yourself if its cost effective.
If you know someone with a straight nb you could always take some measurements from key subframe and suspension arm mounting points to see if anything critical is out of shape. Luckily these cars seem to have a reasonable amount of suspension adjustment so providing all that is near spot on any minor discrepancy after installing new parts can hopefully be dialled out and achieve a good alignment afterwards.
Hopefully it’s just suspension arms and other bolt ons that took the hit, the CV joint articulation will help protect the drive train but if the hit was hard enough the damage could be more consequential.