ok tonight i was doing bout 60 down my road and saw a dog i swerved flew off the road and into a ditch flew out of the ditch and busted the bottom of my radiator off. i was able to drive home cuse i was lie 1/4 mile away but the car rides pretty rough. did i jus knock it out of alighnment? also how much is a new radiator and is it somthin i can do my self.
thanx nick

 

Nick,

Sorry to hear about your close encounter with the dog. Driving without coolant in any vehicle, even for a 1/4 mile is not good but it's already done, so... You can replace the radiator your self, but I'm not sure about the cost, you'll need to call your dealer's parts people on that. It is also likely you may have knocked some of the radiator brackets out of alignment, not to mention what ever happened to the suspension, it's hard to say with out taking a look. If I were you, I'd give my insurance guy a call.

 

I don't know about the radiator cost but if it was a rough ride home, I would take it to a dealer to have it looked at to make sure its not something real serious. Drive slow. Don't want to be going fast if you screwed a tie-rod or something.

When driving down the road, if you see an animal break but don't swerve and honk your horn. Not swerving protects you and your car from serious damage like being wrapped around the tree and honking the horn creates a doppler for the animal to know that your coming. Animals hearing is more tuned to directional than vision. So a deer can hear you coming better than see you. Hopefully, the damn animal will get out of the way or you stop in time.

Never swerve to avoid animal collisions. Your insurance will cover the animal collision more readily than an accident that you lost control of your car and went into a ditch. They'll say that you caused the car to go in the ditch and that's your fault but if you hit the animal, it was the animals fault for damaging your car.

Sorry for the long post. Starting to ramble on.

 

o boy ya the suspention part will be pricy, i jus got back from the place were it happend and the ditch was drainage ditch like the ones on the side of the road and i hit that doing about 15mph, i put my car on my friends lift next door and i dont see and phisical damage to the major copmponents but i will juss have to see

 

Good luck.

 

thanks, letws hope it is jus out of alingment

 

Take the opertunity to put one of those nice aftermarket radiators in