coachk64

Okay, so my truck is broke down in my in-laws garage. The back end is full of yard waste because I had just finished their lawn when the truck broke down. I told them I'd be by on Saturday to push my truck out of the garage, transfer the yard waste to my father-in-laws truck, and take it to the dump. I got involved in fixing my kid's car, which took a lot longer than I figured, so my in-laws decided to help out by moving my truck out of the garage. Neither of them are up to pushing a truck, so he hooked a chain between the hitch on his trunk and my BUMPER. He told my mother-in-law to get in my truck and put it in Neutral, but she didn't have the key. She tried waving to him to let him know not to take off. He says "I see her waving, but I figured I could find out what she wants after we get the truck moved" and takes off. Now the left side of my bumper is pulled out about 8", with a little crease in it.

Now for the advice: I am planning to do the hillbilly repair job and use their big oak tree at the end of their driveway to push the bumper back into place, but then I thought about the air bag. If I pull out the fuse for my airbag, is there a chance that the sensors would still register a collision and pop off the air bag when the fuse is put back in?

Chris_1

iTrader: (1)

How **&%** fast are you planning to run her into the tree at ?
Anyway, I would think the whole air bag deployment thing would be set up for front end collisions ?
A chain and a winch might be a better plan, but I like the ram it into a tree solution.
Maybe see if removing that outer bracket first might be an idea ?

coachk64

I guess I didn't specify, but it is my front bumper. I can see where the L-shaped bracket is bent, so I was going to start by just putting the front bumper against the tree and trying to push it over. If that doesn't work, I'll gently ram it a few times and see what happens. The big thing that I don't want to see happen is deploying the air bag.

If, in the opinion of those more learned than myself on this subject, there is a real chance of deploying the air bag, then I'll take it apart and try to straighten out the parts. On a 20-year old truck (that has spent every winter of those 20 years driving around in Wisconsin) taking the bumper apart will generally involve a lot of drilling and grinding the corroded nuts and bolts.

coachk64

So I finally got my truck running (see my other thread, it's a riveting story) and the hill-billy body shop technique worked like a charm.

Tried to push the tree over with the bumper and got it pretty close. Then a little judicious work with a pry-bar, and a couple of gentle two-foot rams into the tree got it so you can't even tell it had ever been bent out like it was.

Johnny_bravo00

Love it when it all comes together!