Need clarification from a autobody person

[wpurple]

A few years ago I had an accident that involved the dirvers side front corner.
Bumper/fender/and lots of mechanical parts (I believe it was about $6-7K)

but anyway, when I was flushing out the coolant a few weeks ago, I noticed that where the bumper mounts to the frame, there were several big washers being used as spacers where it appears that the right frame rail was pushed back. The difference betweeen the drivers side and the passenger side is about .35" Is this normal? Should the body shop have pulled that side more? Or is this "normal"

Tx

 

[jimbo74]

after an accident nothing is normal.

 

[rickcdewitt]

i've seen a few of these trucks bend frame rails at the shop i work at and we dident need shims for the bumper.the odd thing is you said the shims were on the pass. side not the drivers where the accident was.they might have pulled it out a little too far and figured oh well if the 4 wheel alignment went ok and they could get the body gaps to line up.thats all you really need so long as there aren't still related problems with the front suspension/frame.

 

[wpurple]

oops, the shims are on the drivers side. The body panels line up "pretty good", although the truck will never be perfect. I could have had them total it, but I put too much money into it to let that happen.

Since the accident wasn't my fault, the other drivers insurance (Geico) had no problem fixing the vehicle even though it was a total. The body shop said that it was mainly because the air bag didn't deploy that they could get away with repairing the vehicle.

 

[Exploderpilot]

once you bang them up, you just gotta be happy it's still on the road. i doubt you will ever see a problem from that. i folded one of the frame rails on my truck so bad it sat about an inch higher than the other. still drove straight for me!

 

[Burns]

Yup. When i had a accident in my explorer i twisted the frame rails. They got them as straight as they can. DId a really good job but i can still see a little around the core support area.