(Censored) cheapo unibody cars!!!

[Car Doc]

So tell us how you do it unless it's a trade secret lol....I did some research and it says the front suspension/engine cradle on most vehicles with unibodies is rather solid but the rear part of them is practically worthless for hooking up. Reminds me of when about 4 winters ago a lady skidded off the road, she was driving a Dodge Grand Caravan van, went off the road at 90 degree angle and ended up high centered in a steep ditch with the a-- end of the van about ten feet from the road. She hiked to my house, I went out and I hooked up a tow strap to the front cradle and tried to pull her loose with my JD, then my GMC. Couldn't even budge it and she called AAA, they sent a one ton Dodge 3500 dually wrecker, he parked in the middle of the road, hooked onto the rear suspension with something and pulled the van out at a 35 degree angle upgrade. I wish I had seen how he hooked onto it.

BTW my Lesabre recently had a Class 2 (3500 lb) hitch installed by me, I cannot help but wonder just how strong that hitch actually is and if it would work for recovery purposes. It is held onto the unibody frame by by two half inch grade 5 bolts and two 3/8 inch grade 5 bolts. Car weighs about 3650 with a full tank.

Haha no secret JD but my only way usually is pulling on a flimsy lower radiator support thru the front fascia or grabbing a lower strut rod on the rear twords the wheel end. Neither will take much abuse and it is another shop expense and time wasting exercise in CYA....

 

[JDgreen227]

Haha no secret JD but my only way usually is pulling on a flimsy lower radiator support thru the front fascia or grabbing a lower strut rod on the rear twords the wheel end. Neither will take much abuse and it is another shop expense and time wasting exercise in CYA....

Frickin' BS...build cars that take a $30,000 machine and cost $120 an hour to diagnose the $5000 worth of electronic gewgaws and gimcracks on and then cut corners to make them so flimsy you bend or break something moving them out of a ditch...real progress, huh? A member on another forum I belonged to called them "shiny, s-----y little coke can cars"...SO TRUE !!!

 

[Car Doc]

Yepir thats about it seems like they dont think one second after the car has left the factory how to deal with these and other access issues drives me insane at times.

 

[slowzuki]

Most domestic cars you can grab the trailing beam rear axle or control arm area with J-hooks. The front is hard, imported cars always have an eye of some type, but domestic cars put darn bumper and chin spoiler in the way. I guess its why wheel lifts and roll backs are the only tow trucks now.

I had to make a short length of chain with a special hook on it to keep in one of our cars to hook into the engine subframe. Our driveway is bad and even with studded winters I have to drag the car up the hill a dozen or more times a winter or put tire chains on.

 

[Egon]

Gee, my foreign unibody has a screw in hook for the front and at the back the trailer hitch [3500 pound rating] will work quite well.:thumbsup:

 

[5030]

Just read all the above posts and keep them in mind while you hurtle down the road at 80 per, yacking on your cell phone or primping your hair while playing tag with a tractor trailer that has an engine that weighs 2 times what your sheet metal coffin weighs....

Think about it.

Life is cheap and can be very, very short as well.

 

[The Haymaker]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl1bePiQsoA]Compact car gets it's rear end ripped off - YouTube[/ame]

 

[radioman]

He rights.. about the flimsy rear. I got stuck with my malibu car at Xerox work driving frmo one building to another. Road wasnt plowed and dark out. I went 6 inches too far to right and got sucked into the ditch. I paged my wife to come out with my truck and i looked in the back of car, no place to hook up! I saw a huge stamped hole in frame rail and just slipped the hook onto that. After getting pulled out, I went to remove the hook and there was a 8 inch gaping slash from hook thru the frame rail. @#$%$ cheap body frames.......... :laughing:

 

[300UGUY]

Compact car gets it's rear end ripped off - YouTube

What a bunch of lazy kids. With 4 of them there, why hook up the car? They could have pushed it out or in 5 minutes with shovels, dug it out. Not exactly a bunch of rocket scienctist's.

 

[Pete Judd]

My sister-in-law a couple of nights ago backed over a bank here on the property. Yes it was dark, and yes she is a scary driver. It was a early 2000's Chev mini-van. I grabbed the truck and tow strap and could not find any tow points on the front of it, and the plastic under the bumper was in the way as well. I finally wrapped around the sway bar, said the heck about the plastic, and pulled her out gently.