Carnage: Hurt her pretty bad

Hello TW
Haven't been on in quite awhile due to being super busy since summer. This whole engineering school is kinda a bitch and takes up all my valuable TW time

Anyway me and the taco had a pretty rough day on Saturday. We got hit with a pretty good snow storm and me and a couple buddies headed up to Terry Peak (our local ski "mountain") to take advantage of all the fresh stuff. Had a great time until the trip down (and I was quite proud of the little one wheel wonder making it up without any issues). Coming out it's obviously a pretty good downhill run. The roads were a skating rink and my truck behaved as such. I rounded a corner and headed into a steep descent. The worst part was I knew I was fucked at the top of it. I was in second engine braking and started to lose the rear so I popped it into neutral and tried to use the brakes. I couldn't scrub off enough speed to make the next corner and I saw my truck and I's entire life flash before my eyes. I tried everything and about 500 feet from the corner I just let off and tried to get the front end to catch and steer out of it. That didn't work and we barreled into the guard rail at probably about 20. We bounced off and finally came to a stop. After verifying everyone was ok I jumped out to survey the damage. Somehow the body took absolutely no damage, but now I'm wishing it would've. Because my wheels stick out about 3" from the fender wells they bore the brunt of the impact and I was sitting at about 20 degrees of positive (I think? Can't ever keep camber straight in my head) on the passenger side and bent the shit out of both my passenger side wheels (sorry the pics are huge I can't figure out resizing on the new photobucket):



At the time I couldn't see anything obviously bent or broke and was hoping I just knocked the alignment out of whack. So we embarked on the scariest drive home ever, it was so squirelly and combined with the slick roads it was sketchy. We made it and I finally got into a shop today and got it up on a rack to inspect the damages. Right off the bat the tech was like "Yeah that's not an alignment issue. Shit is broke". So we hoisted it up and took a peek. I didn't like what we found:

Broke a ball joint (light kinda got in the way):


Bent an LCA (or so he thought. It didn't look bent but the fractured rust on it kinda says otherwise):


Here's the worst of it IMO. The LCA mounting bolt tore about 1/2" into the frame crossmember. We loosened it here and moved it back out so the truck could turn right at least. You can see how far into the crossmember it tore:


And that's about it. Both wheels are also bent and the back bumper got clipped a little bit but you can use your imagination. I'm kinda trying to make lemonade out of lemons here and make this my excuse to pull the trigger on front LT. If I need an new LCA anyway might as well go all out. For some of you more experienced guys, is this salvageable? With all this damage I'm worried about the frame being tweaked as well. I was trying to avoid an insurance claim and have yet to talk to them but with frame damage I think this could turn into a totalled situation . I basically just would like to know if I should begin rebuilding (and that hole is fixable) or if I should start over (with a 4X4! ) I've been researching kits and wouldn't need anything too extreme but the possibilities are endless. I'm definitely open to suggestions on kits. I really like the American Motorsports kit and the free installation is quite tempting but I'm looking at quite a bit of money trailering it to Cali and then getting it back up to South Dakota.

So... what does TW think?

 

In looking at kits, I'm finding the American Motorsports one, one by Brenthel, and one by Total Chaos. Is that it? Or are there other options?

 

If the frame is fine (and it probably is) then its totally fixable. Anything can be fixed with enough welding, cutting, grinding, hammering, cursing, etc...


As far as LT kits....Total Chaos is the way to go

 

So update time. I took it to a shop that the Toyota dealer up there refers all their frame work to to get it on a frame rack and checked for straightness. They seemed kinda shady but I figured if Toyota can trust them so can I. Nothing major, just some less than kosher safety practices and very messy/disorganized place. We both were going over everything wrong and he determined the ball joint wasn't bad (and I agreed because every other Taco I've seen break a ball joint ended up losing the wheel and mine stayed on, so I figured it must be good. Didn't even jack the front end up, stupid me) He made a plan to reinforce the torn up crossmember and then measure out where the bolt needed to go from the other side. I just had to find him a new LCA and 2 new wheels and we were set. I ordered the wheels and found this little guy:



figured he didn't need his LCAs anymore So we were in business. I got the truck back (and took it back one more time as they didn't look too closely at the wheels they swapped and left one of the bent ones on) and was just happy to have it back after it was down for several weeks while I was trying to figure out what to do. I drove it around awhile and noticed the passenger side tire still rubbed occasionally. I just kinda figured the inner fender got tweaked or something while the tire was really out of whack. Plus I didn't really want to work on it when I didn't have a garage and the lot I park in was forever in a cycle of snow turning into freezing cold mud. So I went on my merry way the rest of the semester. Fast forward to May and I loaded the taco up and drove 700 miles home. When I got there both front tires were totally bald, so all was obviously not well. I was only driving around town after the repair job, so never noticed the accelerated tire wear until it was too late. So We get it into our regular mechanic at home for an alignment. It turns out the ball joint was bad after all, making the first alignment fairly worthless. So I had them replace it while it was all apart and ended up biting the bullet on 4 new tires as well. So I figured the alignment was my rubbing problem all along and was super happy with how smooth and straight the truck drove after a fresh alignment and tire balance. That was brought to a grinding halt when I got home. The tire only rubbed in bumps while turning right. So when I got into the driveway, RRRRRTTTTTT. FUCK! So I finally crawled underneath to look around more closely at what was up. From here I'll let the pics do the talking.

First, the fronts. These are the LCA mounting bolts.
The good (driver) side:


And the repaired side:


Not too shabby looking, they welded a pretty substantial washer in there to reinforce the hole.

And the back sides. driver:

And passenger:



That one is just scary. It had more welding slag on it or something and looked more solid initially after the fix. I also found their measurement method to have probably just been eyeballing as the bold is nowhere near where it needs to be. The tire on that side is a full inch farther towards the passenger side door than the other side (causing the rubbing). That nut was also almost totally backed off when I initially checked it out with only about 2 threads left holding it on I've been obsessively checking it since. Other than that nut, as long as it aligned straight (it did the second time) I think I can keep driving it until I get back to school in January and can take it back to the shop to make them actually fix it. He understandably won't work with me at all until he can actually see it again, otherwise I would have it fixed by now. I'm thinking if they'll actually measure this time, a big plate can be welded on each side of the crossmember and a new hole drilled. Or I suppose I could have them weld in a totally new crossmember (do 5 lug drop brackets exist? ) I also noticed my rust status on the frame down there, some pretty good flakes coming off. I don't think it has too much longer, but that is somewhat a relief to me. A new frame would take care of tihs problem nicely

Anyway just thought I'd give an update and see if anyone had any other ideas on what to do. And take my deserved for letting it leave the shop like that. Flame away!

 

Name the frame shop and the dealer so others don't get burnt.

 

Have a competent shop cut out the crossmember and weld in a new one? Pretty sure the 6" drop-bracket lifts involve more work than this repair.

 

I'll keep that to myself until I know for sure they're not gonna make it right. I will say, however, that Shore Tire in Olathe, KS is great to work with and have been our family mechanic for years. While changing the tires they lost one of my headlight fillers. They couldn't find it in the shop when I called and ended up discounting my tires to their wholesale price to cover the cost of a replacement (and a whole lot more )