crashed my puma

Not a good bank holiday morning, was driving back to yeovil on the a30 turned into a right hand bend and the car just kept pulling right. I tried to correct but nothing happened, the car crossed into the oncoming lane hit the embankment and spun back into the road.

I've got her back home thanks to a family friend who owns a recovery service (£30) got it looked at by a mechanic friend, turns out the steering rod snapped either as or just before I steered into the corner. Gotta price up cross members, bonnet, rad, bumper, headlight + mounting brackets ect.

Sorry to hear man. How bad was the structural damage?

You're lucky no one was in the other lane at the time.

Yeah if something was coming the other way, id be in hospital or worse. Luckily the way I clipped the embankment the headlight, bumper and lower cross member took the brunt, chassis and suspension are straight, nothing hit the wheels or tyres. All the panel gaps are the wings and doors are fine Most of the cars momentum was lost during the spin.
I'm after a drivers side headlight and the plastic surround/mount.

Bad one mate. On the bright side though, any accident you can walk away from has got to be classed as a good one. Hope you get it all fixed ok.

Sorry to hear of the accident, hope you get it sorted swiftly.

Managed to get the bumper off tonight, and a considerable amount of mud in my face/mouth/eyes. luckily the cross members took only a bit of damage and the wing and bonnet can be sorted by my mate who happens to be a damn good panel beater.
New headlight and rad sourced via ebay, one of the pipes that run infront of the rad has been squashed so will need replacing, the headlight surround is salvageable aswell which is a bonus.

I've taken it as far as I can now so its off to my mates workshop to have the old cross members removed and new ones fitted. He's going to replace the rad and piping plus respray my wing and a bumper once I've sourced one.

Photos to follow once I get round to uploading them

Bloody knackered now, 11 hour shift followed by 2hours of assesing the damage lol

glad your ok,its just metal at the end of the day and could have been much worse.

Yeah I've had nasty thoughts about what would have happened if the track rod had let go when I was pushing the car hard or if something was coming the way. I will get a photo of it soon, the stress fracures in the metal are pretty impressive.

Quick question whilst I'm on my lunch break. I've been looking for a new track rod on ebay as mine sheared, are the puma ones the same as the fiesta? I know the ends are the same but on ebay the rods for the fiesta are about half the price.

They are listed as the same on this site (£15.98, delivered, for a Ford part):
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=270529272464&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Thanks for that, that's saved a few quid :grin:

right then, seems i havent uploaded any pics and ive just rediscovered my photobucket album its time to get uploading

heres my 1.7 puma nicknamed pablo



the mondeo v6 brake conversion



and now for the damage





just waiting for the new parts to arrive now, will be doing some more work over the weekend

Ack!...glad your ok. That's some failure on the track rod :?

looks to me like its been hit and bent previous and weakened

Yeah it looks that way, I only had the wheels off last weekend and inspected it all andthere no impact markes anywhere on the rod. However there was some corrosion in part of the break and the break was in the threaded erea so Im leaded to guess that theres been a crack in the trackrod for some time that was difficult to see and the bend in the rod was down to the way it let go

Quick update, cars still of the road as I've been sorting things on limited finances. Bonnet, headlight + mounting bracket, rad, steering rack, wing, pas pipes, slam panel, bumper reinforcement bar, bumper, track rods & track rod ends have all been purchased.

Turns out I did just fall off the road lol. Lower suspension arm and strut have been bent so I've replaced them, ad I've fitted poly bushes whilst I'm at it.

Found out yesterday that the driveshaft hit into the gearbox and the gearbox is now shot so is being replaced by a 1.4 gearbox and a focus clutch.

Will post up some pictures as soon as I get a chance