Crashed my Jetta Wagon :[ Need advice about parting or scrapping

Ok this is a really hard post to make. Was in an accident this previous Saturday. Car in front of me went into the car in front of her with no warning in heavy traffic, I was unable to stop in time (had almost no warning!) and hit the back of her car. I was fortunate to walk away with no injuries.

Car is a Salvage Title that I bought back from the insurance company after i was t-boned two years ago. 160,000 miles almost on the dot, it's a 2004 Jetta Wagon 1.9L 5 speed manual.

I loved this car so much. Put a new turbo in it in february. Got new rear brakes about 3 weeks ago. As of right now I can't really afford to fix it and so I think I'm going to have to part with it. I've put too much money into this car as it is.

Any clue if it's worth anything at all? Or should I just sign it over to the tow yard and save myself the trouble of towing it home/storing it? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Cursory inspection under the hood in the tow yard was that the engine was mostly intact. The oil filter cracked off and most of the stuff in the front part of the engine bay was pretty smashed up. Turbo looks to be completely undamaged. I don't know that much more about cars to be able to provide more insight. I know a lot of this stuff is up in the air.

Pics below.





Thanks for reading, any advice is greatly appreciated. If general consensus is that I should bring it home, I will definitely update with better pics and also part it out here. I'm located in Ohio btw

That stinks - glad you are OK.

no airbag deploy?

You could remove some bits, like the turbo, for re-sale and get your best price from the scrappers. The block and head are certainly worth something, but it's a lot of effort to do a total part out, + you need space and time. Personally, I'd just wave good bye, get maybe $200 from the hook.

I'd investigate getting that fixed. Looks like the damage is high enough to avoid the frame rails. Find a front clip from a same color Jetta Sedan or wagon, along with the core support, and replace along with radiator and A/C condenser. May be less money than you think, and your least expensive solution.

I'm with ^^^ it is possible the frame is intact and you just need new sheet metal--a new front clip, as they say--the fix may not be cost prohibitive, at least not as cost prohibitive as acquiring a new vehicle to replace it.

All true, body work is always doable, less than the cost of another car, generally.
But please evaluate for structural or mechanical damage, those can be show stoppers.

With an impact like that though you have to think a bit deeper than just the sheetmetal being bad. You have to consider the sheetmetal attach points and if those are damaged. A small, low speed fender bender can have a high $$cost if the brackets cannot be replaced/repaired. Sure a front clip may be cheap, fenders, etc, but if everything they attach to is out of whack, none of those sheetmetal parts will fit together properly without fixing the underlying issues. It can become very tedious and time consuming, not to mention expensive.

Then when you finally get to the engine, mounts, front end suspension, etc etc you've put a lot of time and money. Just gotta weigh the costs of repairing vs purchasing is all. I've seen low miles MKIV's going anywhere from 3-8k around here, just depends on the shape they're in.

It's also hard for forum members to make accurate decisions/advice without being able to crawl all over that thing and see what is exactly is going on.

A reputable body shop/engine repair will be able to give you a good estimate on what it will take to get it back to the state you'd like it in.

KrashDH, you're absolutely right. We're spitballing here. I was commenting based on how the front wheels look and knowing that the frame rails are well below the point of impact on this car. What you'd find digging into it may be something else entirely.

Will tow yard let you take parts and leave the carcass so there is no towing bill. Injectors, head, cam turbo and 5 speed swap. It seems too risky to have to tow to a body shop. Pay body shop for evaluation then another tow bill home.

If you have the space at home and the time you would make more parting it out.

If someone local has spare fenders you can use them to see how tweaked things got.

The risk in a backyard fix is if you have to test the crumple zones at a later date it may not be a walk away accident.

drucifer said:

Will tow yard let you take parts and leave the carcass so there is no towing bill. Injectors, head, cam turbo and 5 speed swap. It seems too risky to have to tow to a body shop. Pay body shop for evaluation then another tow bill home.

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Guessing not. And tow yard is charging me $25 a day to store it there while i decide what to do, in addition to it being 20 miles from my house...

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Thanks for weighing in everyone. I've decided to bring her home and take another look myself. I have free towing with AAA and a good place to park it and at the very least I can sit on it for a while and get better pictures without worrying about the constantly growing bill of hiving it sit at the tow lot.

glad you are ok. I would also look into repair before giving up. I have a question for you all, the airbags. It seems the damage would have been sufficient to deploy them. Were they disabled? I am just wondering, what kind of impact will set them off.

I suspect the impact wasn't hard enough to deploy the airbags.

betaRepeating said:

Guessing not. And tow yard is charging me $25 a day to store it there while i decide what to do, in addition to it being 20 miles from my house...
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Thanks for weighing in everyone. I've decided to bring her home and take another look myself. I have free towing with AAA and a good place to park it and at the very least I can sit on it for a while and get better pictures without worrying about the constantly growing bill of hiving it sit at the tow lot.

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Having junked many cars I can tell you they want complete cars when they pay for one. For example if you pulled the head they would balk, if you pulled the turbo they likely wouldn't know. The thing will always have some value as raw scrap.
I would get it home and go from there.

A couple of things to check:

Are the bumper horns bent?

Do the doors close correctly and the door gap as it should be? If the doors are tweaked. You got more going on than you think.

That could be fixed likely without much trouble. If the unibody rails are still straight, should not be too bad. Find some used parts.

AdinaFloyd said:

glad you are ok. I would also look into repair before giving up. I have a question for you all, the airbags. It seems the damage would have been sufficient to deploy them. Were they disabled? I am just wondering, what kind of impact will set them off.

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b I x
Second pic shows steering wheel and glove box all safe and sound. His car kinda dove under the car in front.

AdinaFloyd said:

glad you are ok. I would also look into repair before giving up. I have a question for you all, the airbags. It seems the damage would have been sufficient to deploy them. Were they disabled? I am just wondering, what kind of impact will set them off.

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IndigoBlueWagon said:

I suspect the impact wasn't hard enough to deploy the airbags.

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Airbags did not deploy. The airbags on the car in front of me did deploy, but that was because the lady in front of me crashed into the car in front of her.

Probably because they don't work, you did say it was a salvage.

Grill hit wouldn't pop bags. I'd find a junk yard front & swap out the parts.

Hey all, I'm bumping this older post with a big update because I've been terribly busy and haven't had a chance to post followup pics.

Here's an album of pictures from a few months ago:

https://imgur.com/a/RBcxJ

At this point in my life I have neither the financial means nor the mechanical ability to fix something like this. I loved this car to death and I will be keeping my ear to the ground for another one like it but for now... I need to part this thing out or sell it to a good home.

So here's my new set of questions:

Anyone want to buy this thing? I'm located in Northeast Ohio.

How much do you think it is worth? I'm guessing between 1k and 1.5k? Turbo (was) brand new, engine had 160,000 on it, brakes are new. I don't know much more than that about what is valuable.

If this was yours, would you part it out or try to sell it as is?

BobnOH said:

Probably because they don't work, you did say it was a salvage.

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To clarify, I (or rather my parents) have owned the car for at least the last 70,000 miles. It's only a salvage title because I was clipped from the side by a car a few years ago (in the rear near the gas cap) and the impact was significant enough for my insurance company to total the car.

I liked it so much I bought it back and paid a reputable body shop to inspect and fix the damage. Hence the salvage title. As far as I know the airbags are intact and functional.

This impact really didn't feel severe enough for me to need them. I wasn't pushed into my steering wheel or anything of the sort.

Parting out cars is a lot of work. While it's possible that you can get more money than you would get from selling it out-right you're going to be spending a lot of your time (at a minimum dealing with "buyers"- and then there's the issue of who pulls parts [if others do then expect damage to parts that they're not buying]). I'd try selling complete for $1,500 and wiggle down from there: if you are totally confident -have records- on the condition of the engine then try to hold at the higher end of the $1,000 to $1,500 range (I'm sure that the transmission is also worth it).

If you could pull the engine and transmission you could then, if you have one around, sell the remainder to a wrecker (like Pick-n-Pull) and get a few dollars (no cost to haul away).

That does look like a relativly easy fix, for the right guy!
It's all just bolt on stuff that needs replacing
Wish you were in Canada....I'd make you an offer for sure.
..... I got a thing about black wagons.
Hopefully somebody can save this wagon.

betaRepeating said:

To clarify, I (or rather my parents) have owned the car for at least the last 70,000 miles. It's only a salvage title because I was clipped from the side by a car a few years ago (in the rear near the gas cap) and the impact was significant enough for my insurance company to total the car.
I liked it so much I bought it back and paid a reputable body shop to inspect and fix the damage. Hence the salvage title. As far as I know the airbags are intact and functional.
This impact really didn't feel severe enough for me to need them. I wasn't pushed into my steering wheel or anything of the sort.

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I can't believe the airbags would not deploy on a hit like that.
No one would give a grand for it, maybe 5, 6 hundred.
It wouldn't be terrible to repair, fenders may be good, just a front clip, hood, radiator &fans, much plastic, AC compressor maybe.

BobnOH said:

No one would give a grand for it, maybe 5, 6 hundred.

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Thanks, just trying to see what a reasonable asking price would be if someone were to want to buy it and rebuild it.

Looks like our could be saved. Let me know if you would like some help. I am located south of Cleveland.

That's the kind of thing I would fix. It's hard to pay good money for something like that though. Not that there isn't value there in parts, it's just hard to start out in the hole on a project knowing there will be a ton of little things to repair or replace.

flashmayo said:

That's the kind of thing I would fix. It's hard to pay good money for something like that though. Not that there isn't value there in parts, it's just hard to start out in the hole on a project knowing there will be a ton of little things to repair or replace.

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I get that. what do you think is a fair asking price?

I bought a blue 03 5 spd wagon with a seized engine for $1000. After taking everything off that I needed for my other TDI's, I started parting it out and when parts were sold, I scrapped the shell and remainders.
I easily recouped my investment in cash plus I got a lot of good spare for myself.
Totally worth the time.
I did this over a couple of years, so one needs safe storage space for that.