Hi all, long time no type but this sparked my interest...
as far as frame damage on a Neon...
the neon is built on a unibody frame with front impact crumple zones. translation. even at a slow speed it will crush like a beer can. not that there was anything wrong with the car before the collision but its designed to take the impact so it doesnt transmit the energy to you the happy driver.
so basically even a slow crash can cause frame damage. and on a unibody frame where its all one piece IE no frame rails to chain-pull straiten it kinda makes it difficult and expensive to fix. so just think if that front end got rocked... its gonna be a whole mess and probably just as easy to total it out and start over.
so I called my uncle who has owned a shop for the last 20 years and asked him how he would fix something like that. and basically he said he would hack off the good part of a strait front end from a junk car, then hack off the bent part of the front end, weld, new fenders and paint and out the door. its obviously more complicated than that because there are several critical measurements that must be calculated so things like the alignment will be back to speck, the engine sits strait in the frame and stuff like that. but frame = expensive
so when your looking at these cars that look like they may have a little bump on the front end or the rear end... remember there is often more damage under the bumper covers that you cant see that makes the car not worth it!
so anyway hope im still proving usefull!
good luck tuning
j
