My craptastic weekend - wbody bites dust.

[Stevo]

Usually I don't go out unless I REALLY have to but I gave my bro a ride to his woman's place on Friday and swung by my friends to chat. On the way home I decided to grab a slice of pizza where I sometimes go and pulling into the mall parking lot I made the turn and drove straight to the pizza place in the plaza but for some dumb reason I took a different route through

 

It's night 3am. glare on 'blackice' from a lamp post light immediately in front of me hid what I didnt see, a 5'in curb and island. I had about 2 car lengths so I turned my wheels but didnt realize that I was on 'splash' from water kicked up by cars that drove through the area previously. I was on a sheet of black ice. The area looked completely clear.

 

With no traction or manueverability instinctly tried to take the curb with wheels straight and went 3/4 of the way up and over the car area sized island.

 

I got out and both front tires had exploded and tore the bottom of my bumper cover. I noticed some heavy frame damage on the front. I backed the car off the island and drove it about 30' from the spot to a parking spot since both rims were screwed anyway.

 

The next day I drove out to the car with an idiot tire from my 88' and checked it out with day light.

 

- Both rims totalled.

- Both tires with side walls looking like they were slashed.

- 4" tear to the fenderwell on my bumper cover.

- the front of my subframe beat to hell.

- engine seems to be angled at about 3-5* indicating mounts have been busted.

- driver's side control arm BENT so that a 16' rim and tire would never fit inside wheel well.

- Rad leaking (note when I got home I noticed a leak on the ground so this may not be related)

- Transmission leaking (One spot may be from where the cooler lines mount but after running the car I noticed a leak maybe where the tranny meets the engine).

- No visible damage on the transmission pan or oil pan. (it is very hard to get under the car with those nubby rims on.

- broken heart.

 

Surprisingly I am taking this rather well considering I have no way of paying for the repairs. I am out of work now having been layed off a month before. I chalk it up to bad luck.

 

I drove it with the idiot tires on front (note it made it look like a dragster/funnycar with the front wheels tucked in in front and normals on back. I dropped it off to the nearest dealer that I know does good 'body work' and satisfactory I-car certification. I think the problems may be mechanical mostly. Personally I think it's gonna cost about $2500cdn to repair but I may be exaggerating. I know subframes new are 800 bucks because I have already replaced one on my 88'.

 

I WANT to get this thing back up and running. I love my cutlasses every one I have had which is why I cannot let go of my 88' SL. I fucking hate winter. I'll grab some pics maybe tommorow when I go talk to the appraiser.

[White93z34]

wow that sucks, but whats important is that your alright.

 

now on to the damage assesment, you may have ripped the hell outa your lower rad support, for your sake i hope thats not the case.

 

but at least your looking at:

2 wheels

engine cradle

both control arms

balljoints

engine mounts

 

i've replaced all that, including the radiator support before. hell if your anywhere near pittsburgh, pa give me a shout and i'll give you a hand. but as long as the frame rails are fine (and even then that dosen't stop me) it sounds all very repairable (to me at any rate, but i'm crazy)

[Stevo]

Thanks for the offer but I'm all the way up in Canuck land =).

 

I looked but didnt see any damage on the rad support since the impact was primarily on the driver's corner of the subframe which kinda launched the car up slightly till the wheels struck home. The tires seemed to have taken the rest of the impact till they gave out.

 

I went on GMpartsdirect.com's website to check parts and interchangability and noticed that control arms are listed in 3 different versions. 2 Without sport suspension and one heavy duty. I'm kinda puzzled about this.

 

I would rather pull these parts from a yard then buy new. The car is 12 years old and WAS in reasonably good condition with low milage.

[White93z34]

parts intercahngeability... you'd probably be best ahead to pull your parts off a DOHC car since you have one and you know it will work, so any z34, 3.4 cutlass, or 3.4 grand prix would be your best bet. my advsise is to get the control arms and cradle off the same car if you can, get new cradle bolts while your at it, they are prety cheep from the dealership as i recall.

 

if you can't locate any LQ1 cars, from what i understand you can use 91+ LHO and LAO cradles and said components, but i'd get it off a FE3 car if possable.

 

overall a cradle swap isan't that bad a task, some of the bolts are a royal bitch to get out, but i supose thats expected, overall it wasen't as bad as i thought it was gona be.

[Pabz]

Are you planning on doing this in winter?

 

Where you at? If your near alberta, I would definitely give you a hand!

[Darksyde]

Pics Pics Pics

[SigEpCutlass]

wow stevo...glad you're okay. Sorry to hear about your car tho.

[MonteCarloChick]

Damn.. black ice is teh suck. Glad you're ok and goodluck with the car!

[psychopyro31106]

Thats the shits man, sad to hear all this! Good luck with getting it fixed, I hope it doesnt run up your pocketbook too much.

[GP1138]

Sucks to hear, man. Winter claims yet another W.

[GOT2B GM]

Man that sucks. Hope it doesn't take too much time and money to get her up and driving again. Good luck.

[1990lumina]

Wow....sory to hear that happened man. At least you are okay. Hitting a curb SUCKS..I know because I've been in my buddy's car when he hit a huge mother of a boulevard type curb...

 

Anyway good luck of getting her all fixed up. IIRC you are in one of the Maritime provinces?? So sorry, I can't lend a helping hand or else you would.

 

Other one of my friend's did the exact same thing you did almost 2 weeks ago...just frickin launched it off though....damn near totalled his 99 Accord.

[chadz34]

I'm confused, did you lose the 88' SL or the DOHC?

[1990lumina]

Sounds like the DOHC to me

[chadz34]

Fuck sakes. That sucks man, sorry to hear it.

[Stevo]

Some pics with my crappy cell phone camera

 

 

^^This is a shot from drivers side. You can't really see the damage at all except the corner because of light blooms.

 

 

^^Driver's side wheel, notice the ball joint and the angle it sits at and how bent the control arm is. The bolt from the front brake slider struck the control arm.

 

 

^^Same wheel from the front. Notice the sway bar. Quite possibly the transmission mount is toast, since there is some 'flaking' of rust around it.

 

Thanks for all your concern folks . Let it not be for me ... but for my W-body. =(::::

 

I was wrong on the cost up here for a sub frame. They are $1450 from the dealer. Thank god I'm getting one for $125. So far it's $750 worth of damage not counting rims, tires and bumper cover. I can do without the bumper cover replacement for a bit because body work is the last thing I will be doing to this car and the tear can be concealed easily. I may have a bugger of a time finding some sawblades locally though.

[GOT2B GM]

Well, I'm glad you're fixing her.

[White93z34]

well hell thats not so bad at all, good luck fixing it!

[Hairdo12]

Oh man that sucks! I hope you don't find "hidden" damage once it starts getting torn down. I no longer feel as bad as I once did hitting that snow bank and denting my fender.

[Stevo]

Yeah hidden damage is without a doubt a bitch... What sucks right now is I have to find 2 sawblades so I can get this thing aligned. I have 4 international rims and 4 brand new dunlops and no way in hell am I gonna mount tires for 50 bucks for a 4 wheel alignment and have them removed again... nightmare.

[Crazy K]

ummm... how abouit using the 88's rims? You shouldn't even need all 4, a good tech with good alignment equipment won't blink twice.

Speaking of which... how hard is it to change the frame anyhow? four subframe bolts plus the tranny and engine mount... but what do you have to do for the engine and tranny? pull them first?

I lost a car to bent frame once... I had a lot more damge than yours as well and decided I couldn't save it. So it donated a shit load of parts to my other car (Damn I wish I had it's transmission cause I need a tranny now )

[Stevo]

Yeah bent frames suck. Rotted ones are even worse. Especially like the one on my 81' Cutlass which turned that car into an instant parts car. My father had a 78' Cutlass and the frame was rotted out in the ass and a cop pulled him over for it because the bumper was hangin down in the corner. The cop asked "Do you know that your bumper is hanging off the vehicle?" My dad said "Yeah, of course, I bought it at Bob McDonalds Chev/Olds!" The cop laughed and let him go.

 

Well my engine is off by a few degrees and I want to make sure that my car isnt bent or misaligned so I took it to an I-car facility to ensure that it would be properly done. I put a new subframe on my 88' when I put in a new rack and we did it in around 40+mins with 2 jacks and some wood. We took an extra 2-3 hours in between that 40mins because 2 of the subframe mounts were ... 'crumbly' and I had to find someone to go and buy them for me and deliver them.

 

Subframes are 'fun' to install.

 

Think is that I didnt hit this island straight on and I'm not sure if the front of the car got pushed up and towards the passenger side with more of the misalignment coming from the drivers side. I think tommorow I'm gonna pick up a set of used 5 spokes from a yard for $200. I'm shelling out bucks to fix this thing so I might as well do something to it to make it look like I got something for my efforts.

 

I just hope I dont have to replace the strut tower thats bent slightly back.