shotgunwilly870

My wife recently got into an accident with her 07 jk it totaled a mini van and she drove home no problem! thank god we had a warn bumper on there it saved a lot of the vehicle but the frame was swayed and the exhaust took a hit, so I've got it back from the body shop with my new warn elite series bumper and warn 9.5cti winch installed frame straitened now I'm arguing with the insurance adjuster about the exhaust the cat hit the motor mount which also caused the cracked manifold (wink) and it has a terrible shake at idle do you think this is due to the cat maybe being crushed? It runs ok but vibrates bad at idle there are no broken mounts and its no longer hitting the frame no codes either what do you guys think I'm going to put headers and a new y-pipe on it once the cut me a check here's a few pics

karls

The only way the crushed cat could cause a shake at idle would be if the cat is all broken up inside (probably is) and it's restricting air flow severely.

Is the vibe only at idle? Did they replace the motor mounts (you only say none broken)? Is the transmission, tcase, etc lined up properly and those mounts not broken?


Lastly.....what the hell happened? It may help others trying to visualize what may be wrong. Looks like the mini van ate the front bumper sideways.

shotgunwilly870

My wife was driving down a 4 lane road in the far right lane with a T bus driving next to her and the mini van owner made a mad dash across the road and got basically T boned by the jeep hitting in the right front fender it spun the van strait and the jeep jumped the curb and stopped where you see it the motor mounts and Trans mounts all look good I haven't been under it while its running yet though I'm still trying to explain to this insurance adjuster how the exhaust could have been damaged he doesn't believe me so we are having him take another look the factory replacement parts are $1,800 plus labor

Jiblet

Looks like your bumper saved the day. Is your wife ok? Airbags deploy?

Sorry to rear about the accident. That looks like Southampton street in Boston.

jk_sea

I'm glad everyone was OK. Couple of things-

1. Arguing with an adjuster in attempt to cover damage that wasn't caused by the accident is insurance fraud. The (wink) makes it sound like this is exactly what you are doing.

2. Popular belief is that big steel bumpers on Jeeps are safer and offer better crash protection. In general, they do not. It's the same reason that you'd probably rather wear a football helmet that's made of plastic and foam padding when running head-first into a brick wall instead of a 1" solid steel helmet with no padding. The forces transmitted to your head are much greater. It would have been interesting to see the amount of frame damage with the ARB bumper versus a stock bumper in the same crash scenario. I'm not saying your ARB bumper or any other bumper is bad or unsafe, but few people realize that with a big steel bumper, they are reducing crash protection when intuition is generally opposite.

shotgunwilly870

No it really is damage from the accident it's not an attempt at fraud at all I'm just going to be happy if I can get an aftermarket exhaust paid due to this accident, if it did not have a steel bumper the damage would have been much worse bumper,fender,grill,radiator,condenser, radiator support etc all I needed was a frame alignment a bumper a winch and the exhaust no airbags were deployed

CerOf

Last I knew, ARB crash test their bumpers. They design the mounts with crumple zones built in, or at least they used to. Still take a good beating though!

Sent from some string and a few tin cans.

supdoggen

It's great that your bumper saved the car, jk_sea does have a point in terms of bodily harm though. Early model cars hold up great in accidents and can usually be straightened out just fine because they are simple heavy steal designs whereas new vehicles are engineered with crush points and look like a crumpled mess in a wreck. Those crush points reduce the impact on passengers. As far as my jk goes... I didn't buy it for its amazing crash rating so heavy steel bumpers it is!

jk_sea

ARB might have them (I've never looked?) and I know AEV does. They're not crumple zones, but crush cans. Crush cans provide a soft buffer for low speed impacts so the airbags don't deploy below a certain speed.

Big steel bumpers add impact-resistant mass to the front end of the vehicle. They're more likely to transfer force to the frame and supporting structure of the vehicle in an impact versus sacrificing themselves like an OE bumper. The goal in a crash is to absorb energy and spread the deceleration across as much time as possible to reduce forces on the occupants.

I'm not judging anyone for having an aftermarket bumper, i run one of my own. I just think it's an interesting point that intuition tells us a cool-looking, thick steel bumper makes us slightly more "indestructible" or somehow safer in a collision, but physics proves the opposite. The bumpers themselves hold up better, but at the sacrifice of other safety systems and the occupants themselves.

I think if there's any doubt, I think we should send this one to Mythbusters. I'd love to see them measure everything up and film the collisions, OE bumper versus aftermarket.