What should I do with this? (Busted car)

EyeMWing

EyeMWing

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So my niece decided the best use of her Tuesday evening would be to run a red light ("It changed suddenly! I skidded!" Horse shit, she's the worst driver in the entire goddamn world.) and get rammed by a rental car. In a car that my father and I jointly own and is on our insurance policy (she "can't afford" her own). Since the insurance is liability-only, the insurance company has no claim to the car.

So, FinalGear. What should I do with this thing?

It's an '02 Focus sedan with the lower-end 2.0L SOHC engine. The engine is a ~30k mile old Jasper rebuild after the original engine dropped a valve seat and ate itself. Automatic transmission (freshly serviced). Interior that smells like a nasty combination of a yeast infection and marijuana, but is otherwise in pretty good shape.

Every panel on the car (except the roof) had some sort of unexplained collision damage even before this incident, and she will NOT be being issued any additional units from the vast EyeMWing fleet as a replacement.





The nature of the "the wheel is broken off" issue hasn't been determined yet, but given the front suspension geometry, it's either:
1) A busted lower control arm
2) A busted strut
3) A busted knuckle
 
Well my first question to you would be "If you were aware what a poor driver she is, why in heaven's name was she allowed access to the vehicle in the first place?"

And my answer to your question would be part the car out for spares and use the money to pay for her to get some proper advanced driving tuition, a speed and hazard awareness course and some time in the ER to shock her into paying attention behind the wheel before you end up attending her funeral.
 
They used to be a V-8, RWD conversion kit for the first generation Focus.

Get one of those.
 
MWF said:
Well my first question to you would be "If you were aware what a poor driver she is, why in heaven's name was she allowed access to the vehicle in the first place?"
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Because my dad's a sucker and didn't bounce her ass out on the front porch on her 18th birthday.

She was "going to buy her own car and move out and this is only temporary". She succeeded in the "move out" part (insofar as spending roughly 4 hours a week here and the rest at points unknown) can be considered "moving out") but the constant stream of calls and mail from debt collectors makes it pretty clear that getting together enough money or credit to buy even a $1000 crapcan just doesn't seem likely. If any financial proceeds from this go to her, it will be for the purpose of "Get the hell out of here and go live somewhere with public transportation", but I'm having trouble figuring out why I should do even that - after all, this is going to hurt my insurance rates and just cost me $300 in towing and impound fees, plus the $100 in diesel I burned to go fish it out of the distant city she was inexplicably in. I'm $400 in already, and have maybe $500 worth of parts sitting on a trailer to show for it.

Which leads nicely to the next point - what the hell can I even part out of this thing? Every body panel is damaged, the interior stinks, most of the mechanical is trashed (except, probably, the engine and trans), etc.
 
Now that's interesting. All my repair calculations to date involved roadworthiness and very quickly grew to astronomical. Rallycross, though, I could do with a junkyard front suspension, a new radiator and a hammer.
 
LeMons?
 
EyeMWing said:
Now that's interesting. All my repair calculations to date involved roadworthiness and very quickly grew to astronomical. Rallycross, though, I could do with a junkyard front suspension, a new radiator and a hammer.
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Hell, that's all I'd do to make it "roadworthy". :D

Really, I second LeVeL's idea if you want to get into rallycross. The automatic likely wouldn't be much of a hindrance. A friend of mine used to rallycross a mid-90's Protege automatic. Kept it in 2nd and ran a screw into the end of the e-brake handle to make yanking the handle easier. It was a lot of fun to drive on dirt.
 
If you want some information about Rallycross, and what you'd need to do to make it legal, I'd suggest you PM Bubs360. He's a very good RallyCross driver, and has competed in the FWD and AWD classes.
 
If I remember right the RWD conversion kit was pretty much bolt in. Not cheap though.
 
A quick read of the SCCA rallycross rules suggests that the quickest bet would be to drop this thing into Modified FWD . Putting enough of it back together for Stock or Prepared classes would cost more, and I know myself well enough to know that I couldn't deal with leaving things stock anyway.

Bonus: Last year's regional rallycross results show modified FWD to be rather sparsely populated.
 
You want to put a V8 in a car where the front end will never be truly straight again? No, screw that make it a rallycross car. That would be tons of fun. Run it for a season or so and if you are good maybe you can sell it to someone.
 
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EyeMWing said:
Now that's interesting. All my repair calculations to date involved roadworthiness and very quickly grew to astronomical. Rallycross, though, I could do with a junkyard front suspension, a new radiator and a hammer.
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Actually...I have an idea.

I just discovered that the Taurus (which I dearly love) is going to have to be replaced here in the next few weeks. While the engine and tranny are in almost perfect condition...the K-frame has almost completely rusted out, and the rust has quickly spread to most of the undercarriage. There's even a small hole in the rear passenger side of the damn floor!

I no longer take it on the freeway cause I no longer trust it to not just fall apart at this time. :-(

I can't sell it to anyone else or I'd never be able to sleep at night, so I was thinking of entering it into some kind of charity "demolition derby" thing.

Maybe we could set both cars against each other in a Star Trek Death Match? ;)



Edit. I am quite serious too. :D
 
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I keep thinking of this now:
(Music and all)

Thanks, TAG! :D

P.S. Any thoughts as to what you'll be replacing the Taurus with? (I'd recommend another, much newer Taurus - 2008+)
 
Here's an even better suggestion:

[video=youtube;yTLq89-ys8o]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTLq89-ys8o[/video]

 
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