OUCH wrecked my Scion XB (with pictures)
02-21-2009, 06:31 AM
#26
Senior Member
SL Member
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Lake Oswego, OR
Posts: 1,301
I really see that tere could be some frae damage and not likely to ever get it to drive quite right again-then the airbags on top of it-sorry to see it.
Find someone with a rear totalled one-weld them together and make one 1st gen come alive again...
frankenscion
Find someone with a rear totalled one-weld them together and make one 1st gen come alive again...
frankenscion
02-21-2009, 07:32 AM
#27
Senior Member
SL Member
Scion Evolution
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Hempfield Township, PA
Posts: 254
and also if the subframe is bent at the slightest they are going to total that as well hey good luck on that G35 search as you were saying above, come down Toyota Of Greensburg we have 2 of them sitting down here not sure if your looking new or used? But fyi my buddy is a Nissan/Infiniti Tech and says there are a ton of recalls on G35's so be careful
02-23-2009, 05:50 AM
#29
Senior Member
SL Member
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Chicago...ish
Posts: 787
They call this "failure of bumpers to engage," and it's yet another reason SUVs are a gigantic pain in the ___. SUVs and trucks are built to look proportional, so his bumpers were much higher than yours...even within the same manufacturer, no less.
The result? His car absorbed the impact with the bumper...your car absorbed it with the radiator, hood, and engine block. Your front bumper doesn't look crushed at all...I think it went right over it.
So he gets a new bumper, and you get a totalled car. Sucks. Sorry, man.
It's a completely different story if the bumpers actually do engage. My sister-in-law, in her xB, was rear-ended (from a stop) by an idiot in a Suburban doing 45, but he stood on his brakes at the last possible second, pitching his car forward and lowering his bumper to the level of hers.
Her car took off like a billiard ball, but all she had was a squashed bumper and mildly dented tailgate - barely $1800 in damage. His truck actually cost more to fix. And yet I've seen xB's totalled at half the speed if the striking vehicle hits the back door instead of the bumper.
There wasn't really a point to that, except, I guess...next time, aim for another car and not a truck.
Good luck, man!
The result? His car absorbed the impact with the bumper...your car absorbed it with the radiator, hood, and engine block. Your front bumper doesn't look crushed at all...I think it went right over it.
So he gets a new bumper, and you get a totalled car. Sucks. Sorry, man.
It's a completely different story if the bumpers actually do engage. My sister-in-law, in her xB, was rear-ended (from a stop) by an idiot in a Suburban doing 45, but he stood on his brakes at the last possible second, pitching his car forward and lowering his bumper to the level of hers.
Her car took off like a billiard ball, but all she had was a squashed bumper and mildly dented tailgate - barely $1800 in damage. His truck actually cost more to fix. And yet I've seen xB's totalled at half the speed if the striking vehicle hits the back door instead of the bumper.
There wasn't really a point to that, except, I guess...next time, aim for another car and not a truck.
Good luck, man!
[/img]
02-23-2009, 07:30 AM
#35
Senior Member
Big Sky Scion
SL Member
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: SJ408-KC816-KS913
Posts: 1,946
not another camo 
glad you are ok..you should at least try and part some of it out and use it as a down payment on something else...tons of peeps onhere need parts it might be worth while to save alot of it
glad you are ok..you should at least try and part some of it out and use it as a down payment on something else...tons of peeps onhere need parts it might be worth while to save alot of it
02-23-2009, 06:09 PM
#39
Senior Member
SL Member
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Chicago...ish
Posts: 787
Originally Posted by scionkidd
Originally Posted by ZOMGXB
They call this "failure of bumpers to engage,"
I'll answer your question...using SCIENCE!
"Failure of bumpers to engage," or its more common term, "bumper mistmatch" describes what happens when two vehicles are involved in a collision where the bumpers don't line up, almost always resulting in damage to more expensive parts of the vehicle's body.
Bumpers are designed to absorb and deflect impact. That's why they project farther out than the rest of the vehicle. Underneath your bumper's plastic cover is a big curved metal bar, attached with two highly squashable metal brackets.
The whole point of this is to protect the more expensive parts of the car. A bumper costs far less than any of the following: headlights, hood (easily $1000 in and of itself), rear door / trunk lid, tail lights, and any number of body panels. To say nothing of engine components.
Great idea, right? Of course. That's why federal regulations require that car bumpers line up reasonably well. Except that SUVs are exempt from this rule, for the same old lame-a$s reason: they're technically in a different vehicle class.
SUV bumpers tend to be higher up, both to increase ground clearance (HAHA SUVS OFFROADING THAT'S A GOOD ONE!
) and so they don't look quite as stupid (imagine a Dodge Ram with bumpers 8 inches off the ground). Small change, big repurcussions.You can imagine what happens when two colliding vehicles' bumpers are set at such drastically different heights that they don't even hit one another. You only need to go to the first page of this thread for a perfect example: the Highlander's rear bumper and the xB's front bumper missed altogether. Result: the xB absorbed the impact with its front grille.
The front grille is NOT designed to absorb impact, so now you need a new: hood, radiator, headlights, upper grille, lower grille, bumper cover, washer fluid receptacle, engine fan, front quarter panels, and more. Worse, because the airbag sensor was triggered, the bags deployed, which does not necessarily happen in low-speed collisions, and easily costs $2000 to repack.
Based on the minimal damage to the Highlander, I would say that this was a surviveable crash for the cars. I would even go so far as to say that the xB would have suffered far less damage if it had slid into a Corolla and not a Highlander. I don't even think it would have been totalled.
Here is a study on Bumper Mismatch by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety:
http://www.iihs.org/externaldata/srdata/docs/sr3909.pdf
note that this is a PDF
You can imagine why the insurance companies would be sick of this problem: they don't like paying out $25,000 to replace a totalled car when they could be paying $1200 for new bumpers.
Interestingly, that study put cars and SUVs from the same manufacturer against one another. Pretty cool, IMO.
SUV/truck bumper mismatch is a far greater problem than most folks realize. It gets really bad in side-impact collisions...if you think a higher bumper missing your rear bumper is bad, wait until it misses your vehicle's frame and comes right through your passenger doors.
Fortunately, a lot of car manufacturers are starting to notice these problems. You can see from the survey that Ford is doing a great job of lining up their bumpers, possibly from the company's experience overseas, where regs are much stricter. Unfortunately, Toyota doesn't seem to know what the hell it's doing, adding further support to the "Toyota is the new GM" theory.
Ultimately, the NHTSA needs to gets its head out of its ___ and acknowledges that SUVs and large trucks driven by average clueless idiots have their own set of safety and financial risks, or else SUV bumpers will remain unregulated. And unfortunately, most of the injuries and financial burdens will be suffered by those of us who actually have the brain activity to select cars based on our needs, and not fantasies that we live in the jungle or an arctic tundra.
OOPS, AM I DISPLAYING BIAS?I need to go write my congressperson. :D
