Hi There, I was recently involved in a front end collision where I T-boned a driver cutting through lanes to a shopping complex. She was completely at fault and my front end was repaired. Upon leaving the repair shop, my car was grinding when turning. They found out that my rear differential was damaged and I need a new transfer case. They say I had to have this issue before the accident and that it is unrelated. Therefore, my insurance is denying the supplemental repair quote. How can I prove that it was damaged in the accident? $2800 to fix and my car drove perfectly fine before the accident. Any help would be great. Thanks!
It would appear that someone missed some major mechanical damage that caused that repair to be torn from the vehicle
Tester
Can you elaborate on that? I’m not that great with cats. Thank you.
The transfer case or transfer unit is in the front attached to the transmission.
Who are “they”? Get a second opinion from a different dealer’s service department (body shops don’t perform drivetrain repairs). It is rare in my experience for an insurance company to deny a repair claim if it is properly demonstrated.
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If she was at fault why is your insurance paying. Hers should be the ones to contact .
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It was done by a company named fix auto and then I had it taken to the local Nissan dealership for a diagnostic.
The problem quite often with collision damage is that while body shop people may be quite proficient with repairing body work and paint most of them are not quite so proficient with the mechanical end of things.
As for whether something like engines, transmissions, transfer cases, etc can be damaged by impact the answer is yes.
I also wonder why this involves your insurance company and not the other party’s insurance.
If the party at fault doesn’t have insurance, the victims insurance company pays for repairs.
Then the insurance company sues the person at fault to try and recoup the cost of the repairs.
Been there.
Tester
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Wife got rear ended sitting at a stoplight. The other insurance company was not responding to ours, so instead of making us wait our insurance paid less the deductible which took at least a month to get
I just did it through USAA since they are better and then they are recouping through her insurance. Insurance is refusing to cover it since they can’t link the front end damage to rear differential damage.
What was the Nissan dealers opinion on the cause of failure?
Which one did you need? The transfer case is located in the front of the vehicle between the transmission and the right front wheel.
I’m trying to get the diagnostic report right now. The guy was like obviously it happened during the accident since it didn’t exist before but he said that he couldn’t prove it happened in the collision. How he worded it was denied by USAA since they said all he said was since the noise wasn’t there before the accident and that didn’t count as evidence.
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Was that on the USSA approved list or did you choose it ? I only use shops for collision damage that are on the State Farm list.
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Yeah, both are and you can use whomever you want with USAA.
You need a lawyer to send a strongly worded letter to USAA.
Got a legal group working on it now. We will see.
You’ll need a professional mechanic to inspect your vehicle, then write you a letter stating that. Send a copy of the letter to your insurance company and see what they say. In the future, you might want to consider having a general-inspection service done on your car once a year. The mechanic will inspect for obvious problem, like the rear differential, and issue a report of everything they find that needs repairing. With those reports in hand you’ll have evidence if this sort of thing ever happens again. It’s probably overkill, but one big advantage, it gives you a good working relationship with your shop.
What is the model of that Nissan? Looks like a Versa to me. Is it AWD?
To the best of my knowledge, AWD was not offered on the Versa.
If I had to guess which model it is, I think it might be a Rogue.
AFAIK it is not. My question is a smoke test. It looks like a Versa to me, I don’t think I’ve seen a Rouge that looks like this.