Need advice - Odd Damage

First I want to thank everyone for looking at my post. I am new to ExplorerForum, but it has been very helpful already. I am a huge Ford fan, but my wife's 2017 Explorer Sport was in a wreck a couple of weeks ago and the damage seems oddly excessive.

My wife was pulling into the parking garage at her work and when she pushed the brake pedal there was nothing there. That's the least concerning part of my story. So we called the insurance and they looked at the damage (see pic) and they estimated about $ 6k. It was a low speed impact, no airbag, no seat belt marks, so roughly 3 to 5 miles per hour. Regardless, we have it taken to our repair shop of choice. They have it for about a week taking it apart and identifying any damage missed by the claims adjuster. The new total was $ 14,500 and about 6 weeks. Ouch. The driver side upper rail and lower were bent which apparently means removing the whole front end as well as the dashboard. The body shop wanted to review the quote internally before finalizing and ended up rejecting the repair because they were afraid of the liability.

At this point I am pretty nervous. I am trying to decide if the vehicle was defective from the start or if this much damage makes sense. I am a fan of Fords and have a F250 I use on the family farm that has proven very rugged so this whole thing puzzles me. Any advice? Any Ford mechanics experienced a low speed collision that caused the upper and lower frame rails to be "buckled over itself" (adjuster words).

Thanks!

Kevin

 

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I’m guessing it was just faster than 3-5 mph. I’d be most concerned about the lack of brakes. Damage to a vehicle is irrelevant if you have a brake issue that could kill you next time.

 

@Mbrooks420 - Thank you for the response. Regarding the speed, if I didn't know how narrow the parking garage is, I would have thought the same thing, but it is a tight turn in. Plus my wife is one of those people that people honk at because she feels the need to almost stop when turning into a drive off of a street.

That is an excellent point on the brakes, I know that there is a "block box" type of recording on pretty much all vehicles now, but getting the data from the car can only be done by a dealer?

 

14k does seem like an insane amount of damage if it were truly that slow. I’d dump a vehicle after a repair line that.

What did she actually hit? Did she run the front end up and over something?

The F250 is very stout, unfortunately the new SUVs from Ford don’t follow suit.

 

This is a picture of the wall. No damage to it other than paying off the bumper. The fluid on the ground is from the intercooler dumping it's fluid from being squished. There was no damage or indentation in the concrete at all.

The only similar damage reports I can find are from head on collisions at 45 mph and higher and they look much much worse. I am hoping to go see it with the front removed so I can get a picture of the frame rail. Thanks for the help!

Kevin

 

One must remember concrete is a static and very strong object. Especially in a parking garage.

I a normal auto accident all of the force may be transferred to motion of the other object.

A 3500 # SUV moving at 5 MPH is a good deal of energy. My guess is that the "Crumple Zone" of the frame rail was effected.

However, like @Mbrooks420 said

Unfortunately automobiles these days are built nowhere near as strong as a 1973 LTD.

 

What is "stronger"?

 

And older car will handle light hits WAY better, but lack the energy absorbing engineering of today’s crumple happy designs.

 

What was it from Physics?

Mass X Velocity = Energy?

Got to Throw Acceleration in there too.

@Mbrooks420 can tell us.

He Bee's a Enginer...

LOL!

 

Force = mass X acceleration. That’s calculating a solid object hitting a solid object. With the crumple effect of the car you’d also have to calculate in what distance the car stopped. Even a few inches lessens the force considerably.

 

Also, NOT my kind of engineering, LOL.

 

ME, PE, CE EE Whats the difference?

They all got an E at the end.

You guys think them up and build them up.

Us field guys fix them up...

 

I did primarily field service the first 6 years I worked in engineering. I’m no stranger to finding the project was nothing it was made out to be, working out solutions on the fly and correcting the desk job engineers work time and time again.

 

Just picking fun.

Enjoy the weekend!

 

@shucker1
Hey, now! As I recall it, you, too, went pretty far towards that "E", just not in the same field. Don't sell you field guys short! imp

 

Life is good on the bottom of the food chain..

"It Great to Soar Up High with The Eagles, too bad Eagles get sucked into jet engines..."

George Carlin

 

Offended at what?

 

If every collision repair professional was as thorough or prideful as you I wouldn’t be so leery.

I personally wouldn’t want to make years more payments on a vehicle that had been stripped down and fixed so much. You have no way of knowing if a repair like this has been half assed, until it’s too late.

If I personally knew the guy doing the repairs, it might be different.

 

I'm old school I guess.

I would still rather "The Feel of Steel" than "Wrap Your Ass In Fiberglass".

 

The old cars surely weren’t safer in major crashes. It sucks to do a ton of damage in a fairly small crash, but the crumple effect does save lives.

 

I really appreciate everyone's help with my wife's Explorer. I will pm a copy of the quote @MONMIX . The shop that did the estimate has a great reputation. As I mentioned in the first post, the owner of the shop actually refused to do the repair because he felt that too much of the SUV would have to be taken apart and posed too much risk.

The insurance company is having another shop review it, but at this point it has been two weeks since the crash and I am a bit nervous about the vehicle and my options. I have been restoring my Grandfathers 79 F150 for about 8 years (an old truck is never really done) so I know first hand that a vehicle can be put back together better than it was originally. Honestly it is the unibody part that I know nothing about. The technician at the original shop said he would be worried about possible damage to the unibody where it connects to the frame. How concerned should I be and should I push back on the insurance?

Thank you again to everyone for your help.