The body of this car is cracking from the front pillar between the door and the side window. It cracking right in the bend.
Has anyone seen this before?
I bought the car new and it is has never been in an accident... Are those pillars fiberglass or something.
Don't tell me that this one is flexing like my 1995 GMC Sierra did.. I sold that after getting it fixed 6 times in the first 2 months. The back window kept falling out. Sure it was under warranty, but it was still a nuisance to get fixed.
The body is steel with the exception of any ground effects the car might have. Two vehicles that the body is flexing and cracking on? What kind of re\oads do you drive on?
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What you have is a stress crack. Which means your car has seen, and is seeing Extreme Flex.
Stress Cracks are common on all 82 to 92 F-bodies (Camaro, Firebird, Trans Am) where the B-pillar meets the roof. F-body cars Flex, and Twist under normal driving conditions. They are the Extreme in GM flex-I-fliers. All GM Uni-body cars will flex, trust me, owning a lift proves this. Lift a GM Uni-body car by the factory lift points, not the emergency jacking points, and it's a 50/50 gamble if the doors will open.
Yet for a Grand Am to exhibit such flex on the road as to crack the A-Pillar, you have a serious issue. The Pillars are some of the strongest parts of the body. They have to be able to hold the weight of the car from crushing the roof in, during low speed roll overs. When you think about the weight of a car, compared to the size of the pillars, and the fact that they will hold. You get an idea of how ridged they are. On that note, if the pillar keeps cracking, you will have a cracked, if not crunched windshield.
You car should be inspected right away. Not by a dealer, but by a body shop that specializes in frame collision work. Don't give them any stories, don't mention any thing about suing the manufacture, ect ect. Just get an un-biased report of the cause, and how extensive it is.
As for the truck you had, to lose 1 back glass meant a serious problem. To lose 6, and not have the dimensions checked, was moronic on someone's part at the service center. Truck cab's don't flex. Lose two body mounts, and they don't flex. They shake. They do not normally even distort around the remaining mounts. Only under extreme duress do they, normally by then the driver would be dead.
They will buckle inwards from impacts. So unless someone had dropped enough of a load on the roof of the truck to deform it, pushed in on the car sides, and the bed wall. The window should not have popped out unless the panels were not joined in alignment and measurements. This would have also shown in the door gaps, and the fender to door gaps.
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