accident repairs

[Mick Cottam]

Following a crash with quite severe frontal damage I am due to get my car back today from the accident repairers. I wqs after some advice on what to look for before accepting the car back. I already know the obvious ones about colour matching. But is there anything else.
Any help would be very much appreciated. The car is Rover 25

[Ray Bell]

Okay... wear dirty clothes so you can climb under and over... have a look at the chassis rails and other panels that you will note carry suspension loads and check for kinks, cracks or folding... check one side against the other for these things.

Ask them to put the car on the hoist so you can have a really good look underneath if you can. Don't be afraid to ask them, either, as they have just done a job that's been costed no doubt in the thousands... they have to earn that, and it's too hard for you to prove anything a few months down the track when a mechanic says, "Hey mate, did you know the subframe is pulling away from the floor down there?"

Make sure the bolts look like they have been fitted right, that they look like they belong... colour matching can only be checked properly in the sunlight.

And look for any unusually large gaps in the body panel fit. Take it for a drive and ensure there are no wind noises that weren't there before the crash.

See how that goes....

[TimD]

Probably need to get an engineer to check for this, but make sure the suspension components are straight and true.

Some people I know (all right - my parents) took delivery of a car that I insisted had been in an accident, although the salesman at the main dealer assured them it hadn't. It's a great car, but the joy of owning was somewhat muted when it failed it's annual road safety inspection for a bent track-rod a short while later - the inspection was carried out at the same supplying dealership....

[Carrie]

I can only agree with what Tim has said. A few years back, I bought a car, took it for a test drive on urban roads in rush hour, so never getting over 30mph. Got it checked out by a mechanic friend who said it had had a suspension arm replaced, but he thought that was fine.
It very quickly became apparent that the suspension must have been replaced as a result of an accident and that car liked going left and very little else. I decided to sell after terrifying myself doing 50 mph over Barton Bridge one morning in the outside lane (oh the joys of rush hour speeds), all of a sudden the car decided it was going to drift left and I ended up in the middle lane (luckily empty at that point). I was steering right and the car was still going left