Transportation damage discovered at 37,000 miles? No.
The transporters insurance company pays for transportation damage, it gets repaired. They don’t just sell damaged vehicles with 1" gaps between the hood and fenders.
If this vehicle was damaged since new, the radar sensor would have always been out of calibration with a list of warning messages in the instrument cluster.
That is underbody damage, not vehicle to vehicle collision damage. The radiator core support and support brackets are thin on that vehicle, possible to damage by hitting parking stops or sidewalks in front of convenience stores. Ask the body shop to show you the damage, you might choose to use your car insurance to pay for the repairs.
The dealer might be calling the lower radiator support the subframe, which it is not. The lower radiator support can be push back from hitting a parking block as someone said. Have an actual body shop look at it.
The more concerning thing is that they put an airbag sensor right behind the Toyota logo in the front. The 2009 Ford Fusion does the same thing. It means that the airbags can deploy if you hit a deer. The danger of the airbag deploying at high speed is far more than the deer hit. I wonder if they’re doing this on purpose to make cars get totaled out more easily. I don’t trust Toyota after they lied and tried to cover up the uncommanded acceleration issues that their 2005-2010 vehiles had.
If that was the case, then–as Nevada already pointed-out–the problem would have existed ever since the OP took delivery of his now-two year old vehicle:
Clearly, some kind of impact (or other type of stress to the vehicle’s chassis) took place fairly recently.
As apposed to putting in the back of the car somewhere??? lol
It’s a front crash sensor, kind of needs to be upfront close… And a Deer can total out a car or at least go through the windshield, so if the air bag stops an antler from stabbing me in the throat I am OK with that…
Maybe the engineers discovered that if they moved the airbag crash sensor closer to the rad that the front bumper would not cave in far enough to hit the sensor to pop the bag before your face slammed into the steering wheel or dash… It is a timing thing, everything has to be placed in the right spot so there is time for the bag to deploy before hitting whatever it is trying to keep you from hitting it, too slow and you are missing teeth, too fast and you are hitting a bag that is already started to deflate… If you know better then the engineers in this case then make your own mounting bracket for the sensor, put it where you think it would work the best and do your own crash test to see how much better you made it… You could make millions off your new design…
I hauled cars for just 2 months. Worst job I ever had. To get loads down to 13’ 6" high you have to crank tie down chains that go in the frames or unibodys with all your might if you are mixing cars, vans , puckups and suvs. Unibody cars bend very easily compared to body on frame vehicles and we used to bend the frames on Toyota pickups. If the person who checks the cars over at the dealership doesn’t catch it before he signs for the cars, the dealership is stuck with it. Even is the unibody is straightened, the strength is gone and it will continue to bend easily and not keep alignment.
Yes. Let’s put the front impact sensor at the rear bumper. That way the dangerous airbags won’t deploy until after the deer has traveled through the windshield, passenger compartment, and trunk. Does that meet with your approval?
