Heading home with a piping hot chicken sammich last night I got hit head on by a late model Taco. Low speed, no airbags or teeth in the steering wheel, but regardless my old girl is hurt bad. Insurance will total it, it's a 2WD rust bucket with a wooden flat bed. I'm going to attempt to buy it back since it's also got a healthy V8, good trans, about 40k worth of lumber bolted to the frame and the interior is in great shape.
![Tire Wheel Car Land vehicle Vehicle]()
From the outside I need a fender, bumper, headlight assembly, grill, grill bracket, maybe hood. After wrestling the hood open though, I found the filter housing twisted and pushed up into the hood insulation, Efan is touching the water pump, TCM contacted the air filter housing, broken sensor next to the head light. That tear you can see in the plastic lower bumper appears to be the frame rail, that foglight fell out on the way home.
Truck will never be straight again, but I'd like to get it back to street legal and usable condition. I can do anything mechanical except VANOS and Desmo valves, but I know zero about this type of repair. Other than what I see, what will I find when I pull the bent parts off? There seems to be some sort of lower structural steel that buckled upwards which pushed all of those underhood parts out of whack. I'd guess there's a lower support structure for the radiator and condenser that is bent pushing them rearwards. The big upper piece actually looks straight. Mechanically, other than the lower bumper plastic rubbing the tire, truck runs fine and isn't leaking anything new.
Biggest question: Will it still be as safe as it used to be? Dakotas don't have a great crash test rating from this era, but this is our dirt bike hauler and sees long trips with my kid in the passenger seat. It obviously soaked up a lot of energy as the only thing to happen on the interior was that my Dr Pepper spilled. I did get pushed about 2 feet to the left into heavy traffic as well.
From the outside I need a fender, bumper, headlight assembly, grill, grill bracket, maybe hood. After wrestling the hood open though, I found the filter housing twisted and pushed up into the hood insulation, Efan is touching the water pump, TCM contacted the air filter housing, broken sensor next to the head light. That tear you can see in the plastic lower bumper appears to be the frame rail, that foglight fell out on the way home.
Truck will never be straight again, but I'd like to get it back to street legal and usable condition. I can do anything mechanical except VANOS and Desmo valves, but I know zero about this type of repair. Other than what I see, what will I find when I pull the bent parts off? There seems to be some sort of lower structural steel that buckled upwards which pushed all of those underhood parts out of whack. I'd guess there's a lower support structure for the radiator and condenser that is bent pushing them rearwards. The big upper piece actually looks straight. Mechanically, other than the lower bumper plastic rubbing the tire, truck runs fine and isn't leaking anything new.
Biggest question: Will it still be as safe as it used to be? Dakotas don't have a great crash test rating from this era, but this is our dirt bike hauler and sees long trips with my kid in the passenger seat. It obviously soaked up a lot of energy as the only thing to happen on the interior was that my Dr Pepper spilled. I did get pushed about 2 feet to the left into heavy traffic as well.
