Can we talk about hidden frame damage on a 2018 Silverado?

Had a Silverado come in last week with a rear quarter panel hit. Looked like a simple pull and patch job, maybe two days. Started pulling it out and found the frame rail behind it was bent inward about an inch and a half. That turned the whole thing into a full frame rack setup. What I thought was two days of work ended up taking almost a full week to get everything measured, pulled straight, and rechecked. Anyone else get totally blindsided by something like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_miles2mo ago

Man, that's rough. Actually, the F-150's rear crossmember is usually welded on, not bolted like the Silverado's.

hannaht2923d ago

Yeah but I gotta disagree a little. @grant728 that 2017 F-150 job sounds like a pain but I've seen quite a few of these where the crossmember is actually bolted on the later models. Ford switched it up somewhere around 2018 or 2019. The welded ones are tougher to fix no argument there but the bolted ones can shift just as bad if the impact is hard enough. I think you got unlucky with that one, not every F-150 is a nightmare like that.

grant7282mo ago

That exact thing happened on a 2017 F-150 we had last month. The bumper looked fine but the impact shoved the whole rear crossmember forward. We had to pull the bed off just to get the frame machine on it properly. It's crazy how a simple looking dent can hide so much damage underneath. Those jobs always blow up the schedule and the estimate.