As collateral damage from the car accident I had back in January, the front end of my car ended up with a rip in it. Which expanded to the point where a chunk of the body is now completely gone. Well, it’s not gone, I have it in the back seat, having finally removed it because I felt having it attached by the one intact pin holding it to the rest of the car was a hazard. I can’t find a picture online that approximates the damage, but if you look at this picture, at the blue car on the right, imagine a missing piece starting just to the right of the lower circular light, in a rough vertical line up to the horizontal below the headlight and back to the wheel well. Everything under that is exposed. Is there anything I need to be especially careful of in terms of elemental exposure?
Isn’t that just an outer covering? What’s beneath?
If that car is your car (it’s an Altima, isn’t it?), from what I can tell you describing, it sounds like it’s a chunk out of your air dam/front fascia, and that should only be cosmetic damage.
Cosmetic damage only.
Do I need to worry about any exposed wiring or cabling? What looks like the wires to the headlight are visible.
It’s fine, it’s just part of the bumper cover. Any wires or anything there gets wet when you drive on a wet road anyway
Is any of the headlamp surround missing? That would be a problem (headlamps + water = bulb go poof) but otherwise what they said.
No, none of the headlight assembly was affected or removed. All things considered, the car and I got off light for being in a rollover. Two blown tires, front end alignment, driver side mirror replacement and hammering enough of the dent out of the roof to give me adequate headroom. I didn’t even have to replace the rims. And I wasn’t injured at all, at least not physically.
You can handle this by adding just one thing: one of those bumper stickers that says, “Honk if parts fall off”.
My MG used to have a bumper sticker that said
All of the parts falling off this car are
of the finest English workmanship
Wow, you are lucky it wasn’t worse (for you and the car).
If you have any wiring that’s now exposed due to the removal of that part of your bumper, if the wires are loose at all, you could harness them with some zip ties or something, especially since I get the impression that you’re going to continue to drive the car “as is” rather than repairing what sounds like cosmetic damage.
On the bright side, it probably died after a short enough distance that you could walk back and pick up whatever had fallen off earlier.
-RNATB, who has “fond” memories of being stuck in all sorts of out-of-the-way places when his brother’s friends’ Midget and B V8 expired in clouds of radiator fluid and bits of fan belt.
So the secondary buffer panel just fell off your ship for no gorram reason?
(Sorry.)
Most of the stuff there is designed to take a certain amount of exposure to the elements. I’d keep an eye on it, keep the area clean, make sure things aren’t getting rusty, watch for wires coming loose, and expansion of any cracks that may make other parts fall off.
Some state vehicle inspections now can reject for fallen off body parts.
We don’t have state inspections. Or, if we do, no one’s ever told me about them.
We don’t, thank God. My buddy who was stationed in NJ has some horror stories about their inspections.
If you do, bungee cords, duct tape and a little palm-greasing may yet save the day.
If anyone ever calls you out on the duct tape thing, kindly remind them that Shuttle astronauts use it, and that it is a key component in the War On Terror.
If they persist, question their patriotism, because duct tape is the American Way, and they should know better.
Pretty much