I just rear-ended a 2000 F150 doing about 60 km/h, we both walked away thankfully. Now I am dealing with insurance and I was thinking about buying my car back from them, I found an '87 T/A that is completly stock and has a bad interior, where mine has a new motor, tranny and a good interior. My question is will the crash do anything bad to the motor and tranny? I know that all my accesories on the motor are messed, the rad came into them, but I was wondering about the internals (cam, crank, etc.). Just for reference I don't think that the impact was that significant, I still can't remember it, but I know that I don't have a seat belt bruise and my neck was only stiff for a day. Any advice would be much apperciated.

 

Very hard to tell until you fire it up again. Did you drop any type of engine fluid such as oil or collant after the accident? Good to hear you are ok.

 

The trailer hitch came into the rad, so I lost all my coolant, but other than that I didn't see and oily substance come out of the motor or the tranny.

 

The engine should be alright it is very tough, but like I said good thing you are ok and be careful next time.

 

Here is some pictures

 

And this one

 

I think mabe you could massage that ripple out of the hood, throw a little filler on the fascia, shoot it, and be good to go. Or, not.

The engine should be fine. Is the battery intact? Can you still crank it? Watch for fan and balancer interference.

 

My battery is still intact, my stereo and light were still going anyways. I can not start the engine until I pull or cut the front end away from it, the rad came so far back that it bent my fan, I had one of those flex fans on it, and I believe that it also bent my altenator bracket, it looked like it anyways.

 

Pull it out and look it over really well. The biggest things to look for are cracked bolt holes(especially the accessory bracket bolt holes). Also check the crank snout and balancer. It could have been tweaked(although I doubt it). It's probably ok. If you're really concerned, you could pull it all apart and have a machine shop check it out.

 

I used to own a 1987 Pontiac Grand Prix that originally contained the motor that is now in my thirdgen....I wrecked the car by rear ending a cherokee at 60 mph.....(his fault..pulled out infron of me and i nearly t boned him) the radiator was gone..the fan was wrecked..and i even cracked the water pump housing...but after taking the motor out of the car(before the insurance company could look at it...through an old v6 in it and crunched it back up against a tree) all I had to do was replace the water pump and fan and rad and was good to go...no problems ever since....







my camaro is in the background..before i even owned it...weird..lol

 

There is one thing that I would check. If the car has an automatic trans, the torque converter floats between the engine and transmission with only the flex plate holding it in position. It is fairly heavy (about 20kg) and will travel forward or rearward in a collision, bending the flex plate. This won't show any symptoms until the partially engaged hub wears out the transmission pump.
Check the flexplate ring gear where it sits in front of the starter.
it should be a small distance away and not right up against the starter housing. You should be fine, it usually is only a problem in the hardest of hits. (ie: straight into a tree that leaves a big "V" in the front)

 

If you're going to try to fire up the motor, I'd suggest rotating all of the accessory pulleys by hand to check for binding. If you're salvaging the transmission, check the output seals and bearings. The impact may have forced the driveline past the displacement limit of the slip-yoke.

My daily driver is a '98 Jeep Cherokee that I bought out of a junkyard and rebuilt. It was totaled due to a front-end collision. No engine problems whatsoever.

A friend of mine rolled his '71 Chevelle a few times, finally resting on the roof. The car was obviously totaled, but after some new plugs and a change of fluids, the old 454 roared back to life.

You've got nothing to lose by trying.