Tunes67 wrote:That car is toast.. the frame is tweaked bad and would likely never hold an alignment properly again.. would cost LOTS of cash to fix, IF it can be fixed. Even if you got that car for free.. it would cost close to $3000 to fix & repaint minimum. Just a guesstimate.. but thats big time bad damage. Not to mention being a 96 means its OBDII so any future upgrades and diagnosis of issues would be a lot more difficult in general.
Tunes67
how is OBDII harder to diagnose than OBDI? I thought you can always plug in code reader into OBDII car, not so easy with OBDI's
Btw, if the car runs and is clean inside Id offer guy $400. If you can get it on frame rack at the body shop and pull out the frame go for it. Everything else you can pretty much do yourself. At least thats how I'd do it. I can do bodywork and it would be worth fixing it for me if its mechanically sound car. It helps if you have a friend who works on a frame. If car is pulled out profesionally you couldn't even notice it was damaged if fixed properly.
Regular shop will charge you anywhere from $45 to $60 hr to work on unibody, to straighten it. But if you do everything else yourself you can have a decent driver. Now if you would have shop do everything for you that's $5,000-$7,000 job right there. Of course it's a write off on a blue book car worth around $2,000-$2,500.
I've seen much worse being fixed and it can be fixed, so don't listen to guys that say oh, that can't be ever fixed.
It's up to you if you want to invest the money in the car or move onto something better.