I was in a pretty decent accident on Jan 9. A jetta hit my passenger Fender and caved it in. The Driver fender has ripples in it from the impact and one of my lady friend's father (car guy) says I probably have some pretty decent frame damage. A further inspection shows that both strut towers are bent in (passenger worse then driver). What I want to know is if I can strip the front end of the car (fenders, valance, radiator, ect) and replace the front half of the frame. I'm not sure what the tech. name is but completely surrounds the engine. Advice?

DD

P.S. I know most of you will say 'junk it,' which I will probably have to do, but if I can salvage it, I want to keep my baby.

 

Also, since it seems like the good folks of my insurance company don't care about me, I'll have to pay for all repairs. So my goal is to keep it on the side and work on it as I can. Since its in an incompacitated state, I might do some other mods (engine, tranny, ect.) before shes back on the road.

DD

 

Our frames our called Sub-Frames or K-frames I think...

I know you can lift the whole F-Body and replace the sub-frame.
I helped a friend that had a badly bent crossmember. He bought it from a dealership that had repaired everything but the crossmember. It's pretty easy if you have all the tools needed.

But if you have to buy a subframe, passenger fender, driver side fender, and maybe hood?
Price everything and see what it looks like money wise.
You may be able to buy another Camaro depending on the costs.
You could find a decent RS or Z28 for a little over $2,000 usd.

But I wish you luck on whatever you decide to do, it's not impossible.

 

I can't recomend cutting out the strut towers and frame rails... and expect it to be right! I'm sure someone can do that for you correctly, but it will be a HUGE job. Most shops would give you a high price quote to get out of the job. I wouldn't trust a shop since most of them want to get the jobs out the door pretty quickly.