I was recently in a front end collision at about 40 mph. The front driver’s side of my 4WD Jeep Cherokee took most of the damage. Before the collision I had no problems with the transmission. Now after I’ve gotten the car back from repairs, it shakes at stops, in reverse and the idling varies. Insurance company says the damage couldn’t have occured from the accident but I say BS, they didn’t drive it before. Before I take it anywhere, I want to know if anyone has heard of this happening before?
What makes you think that it’s a transmission problem? This sounds like a poorly running car, to me. You need to have a mechanic look over the engine, particularly the driver’s front, and find where the problem lies. I’d be willing to bet that you have a pinched/cut wire, or a vacuum leak.
Possible? Certainly. It depends on how much damage was done. Was the engine dislodged from its mounts? If so, there most likely was transmission damage. Look at the repair invoice for all the work that was done. At 40 MPH, I suspect that the engine moved around at least a bit. If the engine moves, the transmission moves.
When you’re driving along at 40 mph, you have hundreds of mechanical parts all moving, and you instantly bring them all to a halt in a collision, then, yah, problems can arise throughout the vehicle. Some things get stressed more then others-- especially things like planetary gear assembly in auto trannys, and torque converters, while they may not totally fail right then they certainly can a short time later.
^^^^^ Insurance co’s know this and while they may try to get out of fixing it, you stand a better than 50/50 chance of geting them to take care of it, so long as you stay civil about it.
Things like this can get to be very hard to place total responsibility on, but if handled properly they can be resolved through an insurance add on claim. Personally, I’ve never been in an accident (knock on wood), but my bro had a similar situation w/ his Nissan Frontier. Insurance spent $1000 more than the trucks value on repairing it, all due to unseen damage found after the original estimate was made and agreed on. The body shop filed a unseen or unfound damage claim and the insurance co paid for a new engine for the truck.
Any heavy hit in the front can mis-align some thing that later down the road do damage to some thing.
Clarify your statement of the problem. You say that it shakes “at stops, in reverse, and the idling varies”. Do you mean that the truck is “stopped”, or “coming to a stop”. Is the truck “moving in reverse”, or just in reverse, not moving? Does the idle rpm vary in gear, or is it in neutral? How much does the rpm vary?