Reserved for "Back on the Road"
CRASHED DONOR
The donor is a 2013 Scion FRS with 12k miles and a mild front crash. It is a gamble but the purchase price is worth the risk. The ideal candidate would have been a theft recovery car with gutted interior but we could not find any of these.
Our FRS safety systems seem to have done their job at dissipating the front end forces into the bumper crash bar and hood. All chassis mounting points seem intact. young and optimistic drivers make these cars very easy to find on auction websites like Copart. The cars are not badly hurt but they get totaled as the labor and part cost skyrocket very quickly especially if you use the parts MSRP and dealer hourly rates.
Frontal crash seems more messy but they are actually easier to fix as there are many small parts in the front that absorb shocks and they are all easy bolt on. Because this will be a race car, the radiator and AC parts would have been replaced anyways.
PARTS COST:
Make sure you shop online for the best rates, as small parts, even cheap, add up quickly. We found the best price online for factory toyota/scion part at
Bochtoyota.
They are so cheap, my local dealer would not match their prices which seems like 10% above wholesale. We still bought the larger parts locally considering shipping would have killed the savings anyways.
BACK ON THE ROAD: finger's crossed
We immediately put the car on an alignment bench to see if it was remotely straight and it was all good. Next step we replaced the bumper crash bar and luckily it did bold right in without effort. The fenders align nicely with the doors as well, so hopefully the car is still straight.
PATIENCE BEFORE ADDING $
The idea is to rebuild the car and drive it on the track in its basic configuration before we poor more money into it. It will cost a little extra to do some jobs twice, but buying crashed car is a risky business that should not be under estimated. We'll see if we did the right thing or shot ourselves in the foot. Pray for us !