Rough winters often lead to a harsher pothole season, and that’s exactly what we’ve experienced this year. The freeze-thaw cycles can cause some damage to the roads when you consider the salt brine hitting the roads and the snow plows clearing them off. As the potholes are starting to form, it’s important to know the five most common types of damage your car can experience when you hit one.
Tire And Rim Damage
Tire damage is the most common type of pothole damage a vehicle can sustain. It could get bruised and form a bulge on the side or even get sliced from the sharp edges of the pothole. It might get a big bump on the tread side if you hit the pothole hard enough, making for a bumpy and uncomfortable ride. Rim damage is also possible if your tires are damaged. Bends, breaks, or cracks are realistic, as well as scratching the rims significantly.
Damage To The Suspension
A lot of the steering components on vehicles are ball-and-socket setups. When you hit a pothole hard enough, some of those components can come loose, and the tolerances in those spaces will become so severe that there could be a lot of play in the front end and make for unsafe driving conditions.
Undercarriage Damage
When you hit a big enough pothole, you could scrape the undercarriage of the vehicle when you bottom out. With so many different parts and components under the vehicle, you could cause extensive damage depending on the size of the pothole and how fast you were going when you hit it.
Body Or Frame Damage
Believe it or not, hitting a pothole hard enough can also cause body or frame damage. We have seen tweaked or scraped frames resulting from hitting a pothole before. Most people don’t believe this type of damage is possible just by hitting a pothole, so to avoid extensive repairs, watch out for them the best you can and avoid hitting them as much as possible.
Broken Plastic Pieces On The Vehicle
Vehicles today are manufactured with a lot of plastic pieces. When you hit a pothole hard enough, it can stress out the plastic pieces and cause them to crack or break. And in severe cases, the plastic parts could fall off the vehicle completely. These parts aren’t cheap, so avoid hitting potholes at high rates of speed so you won’t sustain this type of damage.
DeBoer’s Auto can help repair your vehicle under any condition. We are entering pothole season, and we inevitably work on numerous vehicles for that very reason this time of year. Potholes are hard to see at times until it’s too late, so slow down and be aware that they might start becoming more widespread in the next several weeks. If you sustain any kind of damage to your vehicle after hitting a pothole, come see us and we would be happy to repair it. And if you simply need some peace of mind that your vehicle is in good shape after hitting one, contact us and we would be happy to talk to you.
