Hey,

I was unlucky enough to have been in an accident in my fully loaded Z51. Yuck, but what can I do now?

Front drivers side is jacked up and front frame bent up. Jeez, how bad is this going to be after repairs? Anyone have experience after frame bent in front?

I say a 7mm bend on the passenger side front frame max. The drivers side front frame rail is going to get replaced for sure.

This really sucks.

What's worse when it happened I was just pulling out from a stop to a left turn. Wheels spun up I think to 4k RPM and this puppy did not want to stop even after a 60 ft slide with me pouncing all over the brakes. It's like the car got traction again and just violently swung to the left which caused impact way after I released the throttle and hit the the brakes. It did not want to respond to any input I was giving it I didnt have much of a choice a pole or a brick wall. LOL, that choice sucks. I chose the wall due to it being brick and hit it with a glancing blow.

Now I'm all depressed, and all freaked out. Never had this happen in the past with any car. Just when you think you know a car well, BOOM something GOOFY pops up!

Maybe it was the road condition that caused me to slide with the sand in the middle, but I thought I would stop way before it did.

I was like sliding saying STOP!!!!! DAMN IT STOP!!!! Then it kicked to the left and I was like FREAKIN STOP you damn car!!!
I am going to eat &*(&(*.

Well...I ate it. F&&(!!!!

The whole time I felt like a cowboy on a runaway horse...LOL!

Anyone have good experience with car after frame repairs..or is it gonna be just sub-par now?

I never had any collisions before, as I have always avoided them somehow someway, but this vette really seemed like it had an appetite for destruction. It just didnt want to stop, then it just slung left and ate up that brick wall. I still dont get why II slung left so hard, but oh well damage is done.

I feel like just turning it into a track car now and rebuilding the whole damn car with kick *** aftermarket parts if I have to pull equity out of my house to do it. I love the car, but damn I might have to rename it widowmaker since it is black and likes to head for brick walls after long braking. What the hell happened with this puppy kicking to the left so violently?

Anyway...how bad is this going to be after repairs? The same?

 

 

For starters you are alright and yes your car can be repaired.

The hunt for a good shop is the real issue here and the frame is sold in sections for just this reason. I have been in cars that were cut in half and welded to a new half without being able to tell the car was ever hit. If the proper equipment is used, the results can be awesome.

The downside to the story is that it will suffer from a lower resale due to the damage history. Years from now you may have a new car to replace this one and you wont care about this situation.

 

I feel for you in losing control of the car.
I lost control making a right turn from stop during light rain.
Gave it a little gas and once I realized it was starting to spin, let go and must have slammed the brakes with counter left steer. The car still managed to turn me around 90 degrees more than intended and hit into the curb while sliding to a stop. I am not an expert driver, so I felt the car could have behaved or stopped better. Of course, my fault for thinking the beast was tamed and for hitting the brakes in rotation. My damage was radiator support subframe, fan shroud, top plastic bar, etc. for about $1000 damage with no body work required (bottom of front bumper is scraped but can't tell unless under the car).
Next time, easy on the gas until steering has almost been unwound.

 

What about using your TC??

 

I did the same thing in my c5 with tc and ah on and ended up totaling the car
On thig with the vette you have to be REAL carefull when turning out and JUMPING ON THE GAS
THIS CAR WILL JUST SLIDE IN CIRCLES IF YOU ARE NOT CAREFULLL
I have pictures to prove it
But the airbags save my life and now i have a C6

 

Sorry to hear of your mishap. I am seeing alot of wrecked C6's due to similar circumstances. If the road is wet the braking really takes alot to get used to. Where are you from?

 

Same circumstances as my wreck, though I don't see anyone jumping on your a$$ & telling you to stick with video games.

Yeah, once you're sideways, it's like Space Mountain -> hold on tight, close your eyes and SCREAM...

Rick

 

In all fairness, I didn't see anything in this post to indicate that the driver was intentionally trying to get the rear loose going around the corner just to see if AH/TC would kick in.



Mike

 

What do you expect if you drive like an idiot???????????????????

 

I've gotten sideways 2 or 3 times. I have a lot of experience offroad driving, trucks, Odyseys', rails, and quads and am pretty darn comfortable power sliding in and out of turns.

I think your problem is hitting the brakes. My first thought is not to hit the brakes but to back off and feather the throttle through the turn/slide. That, with the AH has saved me twice for sure.

The brakes are last resort when you are in full 360 mode or out of room pending collision. But in that case you should not have hit that particular corner in an aggresive fashion. All my experiences where on corners that gave me some escape room in case of the worst.

The problem is the only way to get good at this is through practice and experience. Find a huge parking lot and work on it.

 

WHERE IS TC/AH??????

This is now loss of control incident #6 on this forum with AH/TC engaged on the C6, but apparently not working. I'd say there is a serious DEFECT issue here that needs to be adressed. Think I'll be holding off on a purchase until this is adressed and resolved.

 

TC/AH is an assist--not a nanny.

 

Bad driving and TC/AH purpose are irrelevent to this discussion.

What is relevant, is that it should have intervened, but apparently did not. All cited cases would have been easily corrected in a C5 woth TC/AH on. They were not in the C6.

That is a major problem. It could be as simple as a defective yaw sensor or steering angle sensor which fails to send a signal. The system interprets this as zero delta and therefore no corrective action is taken.

 

You can lose it in any car with handling/traction control. The automatic controls will not handle an extreme situation like the one just described, i.e. making a sharp left turn from a standing stop at 4000 rpm. In effect he was trying to burn rubber while making a sharp turn, it is no wonder he spun, that is a recipe for making smoking 360 degree donuts. I am not making any value judgments about the driver, just an observation based on what he wrote.

The traction/handling control is designed for situation where the car is just the edge of losing traction or just over the edge. For example, if you take a corner that has a max cornering speed of 60 mph and you are going 65 mph, the system will detect the loss of traction and attempt to save you from disaster. But if you take that same corner at 75 mph it may fail to save your ***.

With 400 HP it is very easy to get way over the limit and far beyond the limit of traction, very quickly. You have to be gentle with this car, especially in accelerating out of corners. Gradually give it gas coming out of a corner, but the car has to be fairly straight before you hammer the accelerator.

If you are on a race track in the wet and trying to go fast, you are near the edge of traction on most corners and you can feel the system kick-in. The system is nice because it gives you a gentle warning every time you are near or a bit over the edge of traction. It helps you to find the limits of traction both in the wet and dry, and those are good things to know. But if you are way over the edge, the only hope you have of being saved, is GOD.

 

That's my point: the wheels should never get to 4K rpm if it is working properly, because it instantly cuts power as soon as it senses wheel slippage. So that looks like a malfunction to me.

Granted there is little any satbility system can accomplish when the car is in a sideways slide. But it should never have gotten that far out of shape to begin with (at least that is the case with C5).

 

Like the wheels spin up to 4,000RPM, on a left turn from a stop, by just "feathering" the gas & clutch.

I'm not ragging on the guy here, as NO ONE HERE can say they haven't punched it in a similar situation. In my case, I intentionally broke them loose, with the "trust" from numerous previous/like situations, that the AH/TC would kick in and rein the rear end back in. In both situations described (mine & this thread starter) AH/TC apparantly did not engage. As commented by someone else on the thread, this is like the 6th incident/accident where an assist/control did not operate as expected. I can't say that this guy jackrabbited from the stop, EXPECTING AH/TC to make it a more orderly affair - but it appears that it never attempted to intervene at all.

I've learned my lesson, I'll drive like it doesn't exist at all, and get some more track & skid pad time in, to better familiarize myself with recovery procedures.

On the WORSE side. They got my rear deck lid & floor in today (the car has been sitting 3 weeks) and they were DAMAGED in transit and unusable. Deck lid is coming in air thursday, rear floor is BACKORDERED. Unless I give them the OK to just "graft in" the undamaged section in place of my damaged section (instead of replacing the whole floor), I could be out my car for "god knows how long" (direct quote from the parts manager when asked how long it would take to get one). I have a "connection" with a large auto group down here, taking it to the zone manager in a meeting wednesday, to see if he can shake one loose. BG produces 150 cars a day, be nice if they could produce 149 & send me my part...

Rick

 

Try looking for a shop that has a frame support system for the corvette that GM uses to make them. There's a shop here in Houston that has one and they can straighten it out correctly. The dealerships will most likely not have one.
Sorry to hear it and good luck.

 

To me AH is like a safety on a gun. You should never point a gun at someone even if you justify it by having the safety on. Now to point a gun at someone by accident and have the safety save you is one thing, but relying on it to protect you by intentionally pointing the gun around is just not smart.

THe only way to drive is like you don't have it, take it to the edge, but not intentionally over it unless you have PLENTY of room.

Now if you take it to the edge and there is a little sand or you "slightly" misjudge, then 9 times out of 10 the AH will save your a**! It saved me for sure on one occasion! Be safe and be !!

 

Nicely said. I agree!