Please, Please HELP! All I want to do is drive my 944 again.

[paitken76]

My baby drove like a charm. Well maintained and incredibly restored. I was just hit in the rear by some jack_ss. The most noticable damage was that the bumper shocks got completely compressed, the bumper was bent and scratched in several places, the rubber "ends" of the rear bumper were cracked and bent out, the lower portion of the tail piece (where the Porsche decal is) is crushed in and my tailpipe is crunched and torqued to the right. This guy hit me head on in the rear. Within two days I got smoke billowing from under the hood as well as an incredible amount from the tail pipe. I mean a lot! Thick white smoke that if I drive rises 20 feet in the air and leaves me with a white tail about 50 feet back. Nasty. I also have a bit of a sputter rhythm to the engine now that I didnt have before and most resently it overheated, burned up all the coolant. Under the hood I noticed that it looked like the smoke from that area was coming from the gasket / joint that joins the exhaust manifold to the exhaust pipe with O2 sensor heading to the back. My questions are what is causing all this? How do I fix it? Can I still drive my baby? Will I be able to drive my baby? And most of all, as I have an an Insurance inspector coming out in a day or so, was this caused by the hard blow to the rear? Could a direct hit to the tail pipe travel up under the car to the engine and crack or shift something? Input from experienced shop persons and mechanics would be helpful. I need good honest answers and help. Thank you all!

[mambodave]

Your going to need to get that thing on a lift and see what got messed up . Trace from teh impact up to the fron of the car and you should see damage (bent pipes, craked block etc)

Theres a good chance the insurance co will total it. So try to buy it back from them if they do , you can get it real cheap, then fix it.

If your billowing white smoke, it sounds to me like a head gasket blew , in which case if it were caused by the wreck, your gonna have a hard time proving it did, unless there is obvious damage.
But if teh car ran hot, that could have craked teh block and in turn caused the white smoke. The only sure way to tell is to get it apart.

[fast924S]

It is possable, Sounds like you have a poped head gasket, which could have been cause by the accedent, You said the tail pipe was bent, maybe he hit hard and the shock went all the way up the exhuast and shifted the head making it leak. Sounds like you are gonna need to do alot of work to get her on the road. Total the car buy it back and rebuild her.

[Zero10]

I've seen rear-enders snap off exhaust studs, but cracking a head would be a first, not to say it's not possible. It may have stressed the head gasket somehow, causing it to fail, I find that much more likely.

If it over-heated, who knows what kind of trouble you can be in for.
Best advice at this point, is see what the insurance company wants to do with the car. If they're fixing it, get the mechanical bits fixed out of their pocket, however if it's getting totalled, buy it back, and pull the head to see what's going on.