Crunch!

Coming home from work one afternoon a 17 year old girl in her boyfriend's Camaro ran a top sign and got the RX. Frantic braking as I saw her coming wasn't enough; the Camaro caught the front bumper, which raked down the side of the Camaro. The damage to TRX looked superficial at first, but it bent the whole front chassis a few inches to the right from the firewall forward. That made the fourth total in ten years. I had the chassis pulled back straight, but the body panels will never line up quite right again.

Note the hood seam here.

The bumper's impact absorbers were bent over, shoving the bumper further to the side than the rest of the nose. Forward-opening hood could not be opened due to overlap with header panel.

Passenger side shot; you can see the bend a little better here.

Had to cut the splash panel out with a nibbler to get the (miraculously undamaged!) hood off. Note nice hole in the new $200 radiator, only a few weeks old.

Here's what I had to do to the splash panel to get the hood off.

crunch, munch

wrecked sheet metal stripped off, cleaning things up now.

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