It was late at night so couldn't see much, initially I thought it was the end of the car. I left that evening with the car being put on the back of a low loader and thought that was the and of an era.
In the light of the next day at the salvage yard, I had a look around and it looks horrible. But good news, there was no suspension damage.
I needed to get the car home and strip it down to ensure there was no chassis damage. Here's the strip down in progress
One big hole:
clam off
The rad took a lot of the impact
Managed to miss all of the brakes lines and servo
Amazingly there was no damage to chassis, which is purely luck that I hit the tree straight and in the middle, which meant the crashbox could do its job. It did it well! There was a couple of other minor scuffs to the doors and a small crack in the passenger ear.
I was never planning to sell the car, so in my ownership it has wanted for nothing. I haven't added up the cost in the last 3 years (~18k miles) but it could be 5 figures.
The car has 80k on the clock but it has a LEH engine with 25k on it. Within the last 10k it has had cambelt/pulleys, water/oil pumps, handbrake cable, side engine mounts, back and front yellow poly inserts, heavy duty helix clutch, steel flywheel, upgraded rear toe links, alternator, short belt mod, all heatshields, lightweight header tank bracket, Fez heater, fred666 carpets, slim line amp/sub.
It has the Dave Hardwick alloy airbox, big MMG turbo intake pipes and tophat, the MMG big intercooler with air guiding and outlet vent in wheel arch, recirc valve, catch tank, full 2.5 miltek.
I couldnt let it die, so it will be resurrected. So the plan is full repair and suspension refresh.
First off, need to get that crashbox off. What a horrible, time consuming job, there was a good 2 hours of peeling all the glue of after this pic
Then I had a very short vx
:
Great work. Should be better than ever once it's all done.
