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Crunch...AV Got Smashed....bad.

victory_red

SM 2003
Full Member
Joined
Jun 21, 2002
Messages
224
Location
Tell City,IN.
No,not mine thank goodness. One was towed into our shop this morning(I am partowner of a body shop). it was bad to,seems the lady driving her 3 week old Av turned right into the path of a Yukon. Luckily she just had minor scrapes and bruises. The side airbags did inflate as well as the driver air bag. From the front door forward was pushed over about 12" to the right and the bellhousing on the tranny is even snapped from the impact. The front doghouse is pretty well gone but the A-pillars were not damaged. Insurance adjuster is due in tomorrow morning to look at it and the estimate to see if he will total it or not. Since the A-pillars are fine,I don't think he will total it.But if it was mine,I would push for a total.It is that bad. So far the estimate is pushing the $17,000 dollar mark but that isn't even 50% value yet. They usually don't total until 70-80% to value. The owners are coming in tomorrow morning to meet with us and the adjuster. If they total it,I may buy it for parts and to part out for you members. It is a z-71,blue,with the leather interior. 3 of the 4 wheels are still good too. The estimate has been left "open" at this point just in case something else is messed up that we didn't catch the 1st time around. I will warn you all,parts are still very expensive for these trucks since they are still new on the market. It don't take much before the $ starts to add up.
? I haven't seen the yukon yet,I guess it went to another shop. I will post pics as soon as the insurance decides whether or not to fix it. Stay tuned. ?:B:
? I normally don't even stop in there on Mondays but had time to kill today. Wish I could have seen the look on my face when the wrecker pulled in with it,I just stood there motionless for the longest time! Almost brought a tear to my eye.i am just glad nobody was hurt. (y)
 
Well if there is one 'good' thing to come out of that story, we can say the Av holds up pretty well in a bingle and does the major job of protecting the occupants.

Not that any of you would want to find that out.
 
Skidd said:
Well if there is one 'good' thing to come out of that story, we can say the Av holds up pretty well in a bingle and does the major job of protecting the occupants.

Not that any of you would want to find that out.

Hello all, first post from a newbie. This certainly wasn't anything I wanted to find out first hand, but I did last Friday night. :6: I was towing my travel trailer down the highway for a holiday weekend of camping. As I approached an entrance ramp I saw a car on the ramp, and from his position and speed knew he would reach the end of the ramp about the same time I would. Checked the mirrors, saw there was a car coming up from the rear in the left lane, had some room but not really enough to safely move over I didn't think. Traffic in the right lane behind me was heavy enough that slowing down to let the guy in ahead of me wasn't safe either, especially since I would have had to come to a near standstill to let him in. That would have almost certainly resulted in either the trailer starting to sway from the sudden stop or in my getting rear-ended and possibly setting off a chain-reaction of collisions behind me. So I stayed where I was and counted on the guy on the entrance ramp to have some common sense and yield to traffic on the highway like he's supposed to legally do. Well, he was either blind and didn't see 35+ ft. of truck & trailer, or he had no common sense. He didn't slow down a bit, forcing me over into the left lane at the last second to avoid a collision with him. :7: About a second later there was a bump from the rear of the trailer, followed shortly by the driver side front corner of the Av crashing into the guardrail and then pinballing from one guardrail to the other a couple times before coming to a stop crossways on the highway with the Av upright and the trailer on it's side. I walked away with just a bruise on my shin. The front end and rear bumper of the Av are crunched pretty good :cry:, but no damage at all to the passenger compartment area. Airbags didn't deploy, all the impacts were on the corners of the Av, no direct head-on or T-bone impacts. Fortunately no one else was hurt either, only one other car had some damage on a door from the trailer hitting it. The car coming down the ramp was long gone by then. :8:
Victory red is right, parts are expensive. Repair estimate is $11,500. Good news is that there doesn't seem to be any frame damage, and thank goodness I have good insurance.
 
Well that's a hell of a first post :eek:...Hopefully you can get all put back together to your liking, then you can start Modding it ;D
 
When will we see some pictures of this wrecked AV? I'm curious to see how it held up? ???
 
byron said:
When will we see some pictures of this wrecked AV? ?I'm curious to see how it held up? ? ???

As soon as I figure out how to attach a picture to my post successfully. ;) I scanned a couple pictures and shrunk them down so they were under the maximum attachment size. But no matter how many KB I shrunk the pics down to, when I tried to attach them to my post I got a screen that said they were that same # of KB too large to attach. Any suggestions for posting them?
 
JRyther said:
If someone is going to take me out then I'm not moving.
?This just pisses me off. ? :8: ?Glad to here your ok and if you ever find that Jerk hit him once for me. ? >:D

Jon

That's basically my motto now too. Hopefully I'll never find myself in that situation again. But if I do, and there's going to be a collision no matter what I do, then the jerk causing the problem is going to be involved rather than some poor driver in the next lane or behind me.
 
The picture attachment function seems to be working fine tonight. Here's an attachment for a picture of my crunched Avalanche. Most of the damage is on the front end. The driver side rear bumper is banged up also, doesn't show up on this picture.

[attachment deleted by admin larger then 100KB]
 
Now that is a sad sight. Glad to hear that no one was injured.

On a different note, if you save your picture as a JPEG (.jpg) extension it would be a great deal smaller and you could have the picture larger.

 
endeavorc said:
On a different note, if you save your picture as a JPEG (.jpg) extension it would be a great deal smaller and you could have the picture larger.

Thanks for the tip. My scanners default setting was to scan as .bmp. Played around with the settings and was able to save some pictures as JPEG. I've attached some more pictures of the Avalanche and one of the trailer. :cry:


[attachment deleted by admin larger then 100KB]
 
Leather said:
Sorry Big Blue :6:, Glad to hear no one was hurt bad. Kinda makes ya wonder how much of an impact is needed b4 airbags deploy!

I believe the front airbags are only supposed to go off in a head-on collision, and the side airbags are only supposed to go off in a broad-side T-bone type collision. In this case all the impacts were on the corners of the Avalanche, so it was appropriate for them to not go off. Probably saved me a broken nose by not going off. ;D
 
I talked to the body shop that is repairing my Avalanche today. Good news! (y) The parts are in so they've started working on my truck. They've taken off all the damaged metal and bumpers, checked the frame over again, and there is no frame damage at all. :) The trailer hitch got twisted like a pretzel, but the damage was all to the hitch and receiver, no problem with the frame itself. If all goes well I may have my Avalanche back, shiny and intact, by the end of next week. ;D ;D ;D
 
Glad to here everything seems ok with the frame. Are you have withdrawls from not having the Av yet ???
 
endeavorc said:
Glad to here everything seems ok with the frame. Are you have withdrawls from not having the Av yet ???

Is that what's causing the little "tic" I get when I see the empty spot in the garage? :D I'm dealing with it as best I can by driving the Avalanche's alter ego, a 1995 Mazda Miata (red of course). When I bought the Avalanche last fall one of my co-workers wanted to know if the Miata would fit in the back of the Avalanche. I think the Escalade EXT people got the idea for their commercial from her! ;D No, I haven't tried it, but I think it would just about fit if the mirrors were folded in. :0:
 
rvissers said:
Do you have any pics? ?Haven't seen to many ?accident pics of the AV.
Man, that is just sick. Morbid... ummm... well... to be honest... I have to admit that I, too, am interested in seeing the shots. I am curious to see how well the AV holds up to other vehicles in real world crashes.
 
Morbid . . nah . . . Morbid is wanting to see the bodies at crash sites :eek:. This is mere curiosity . . it's interesting to see how well the Av seems to hold up under adverse conditions. If it were inevitable, I'd sure rather have a wreck in the Av than in any other vehicle that I have owned.
 
pdxkevin said:
Man, that is just sick. Morbid... ?ummm... well... to be honest... I have to admit that I, too, am interested in seeing the shots. ?I am curious to see how well the AV holds up to other vehicles in real world crashes.


In all honesty, I'm more interested in seeing how well SOMEONE ELSE'S AV holds up to other vehicles in real world crashes. :)

Glad everyone came out OK. Trucks are easier to fix than people. From what everyone is saying here and in other threads, the Av seems to hold it's own pretty well. That's the primary reason I bought the Av, to protect me and my family from the idiots out there.
 
ya thats gotta hurt i mean the avy is proboly stronger that the GMC but witch one was more damaged?
 
I'm a happy Avalanche driver again. :D Got the truck back 9/26, then headed out for Michigan's U.P. with it on 9/27. It looks and drives like new, the body shop did a great job. ;D Attached is a picture with the shiny look after repairs. :)
 

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Looks good Big Blue, glad to hear your back in the drivers seat.
 
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