I've just looked in the back footwell of my 04 Sporting and realised that there's a fecking great big "hill" on the passenger side. The car was in at Farmer Autocare in Livingston last week, to have the front tyre repaired, and they've obviously jacked it front and back (there is the distinctive circle of a professional jack directly underneath this "hill"). It's been jacked on a sticky-out bit of metal with a hole, about 2 inches to the left of the marks underneath the car.

Anyone any idea what damage this will have done? Is the chassis likely to be f***ed? Could this potentially now be a write-off?

I'm going to go to Fiat tomorrow to get it looked at and get written confirmation of the damage, before I take it to Farmer's and go absolutely f***ing mental at them.

Words of comfort would be much appreciated now...

Ouch, that is awful.

Not being an expert or seeing exactly where the damage is it is impossible to tell if this is a write-off.

My gut reaction though is this is unlikely, simply because if the part of the floorpan bent so easily when taking the cars weight then it would not be much use as a structural member in a crash

Likely need to be beaten-out, re-treated with anti-corrosion materials (if the paint has broken) and resprayed.

Good luck

JTD Monkey said:

Ouch, that is awful.

Not being an expert or seeing exactly where the damage is it is impossible to tell if this is a write-off.

My gut reaction though is this is unlikely, simply because if the part of the floorpan bent so easily when taking the cars weight then it would not be much use as a structural member in a crash

Likely need to be beaten-out, re-treated with anti-corrosion materials (if the paint has broken) and resprayed.

Good luck

Click to expand...

That's (hopefully) a relief. Obviously whatever happens, I have no intention of being out of pocket. It's quite a hefty bump though. Strangely the actual underneath of the car doesn't *seem* to have been pushed up.

be prepaired for Farmer Autocare to say "wasnt us mate"

Good news! It was all a false alarm. Took the car into my local Fiat dealer for them to have a look at - to confirm that it had been jacked in the wrong place before I went back to Farmer Autocare to lay the smackdown on them.

He couldn't tell me from looking at it from inside what had happened, so pulled the carpet up and had a look. He came back to me with a strange metal object, which was apparently not supposed to be in the floorpan.

Seemingly, part of the Fiat factory had been living underneath the floor since new (it was partially painted and everything)! When the car was jacked, it must have provided enough flex to push this up to leave the large lump that I mentioned.

Any clues as to what the attached is???:

That's a thingamajig for doing the wotsit.

Glad to hear your car is ok.