Prying open the hatch after a collision

My spouse's 2005 Prius was rear-ended by a pickup truck in rush-hour traffic. She's fine-- no injuries, just frustrated. Hit & run, totally the pickup's fault.

We have no collision insurance, so there's no bureaucratic restrictions on our repair options. We filed a police report and notified our insurance company (in case the other drivers contact them) but otherwise the repairs are up to us.

The pickup's impact was straight-on square and centered at the bottom of the hatch, just over the latch. It was also hard enough to drive her into the car in front of her. No airbags deployed. The front bumper is scratched & dented but driveable, and probably not worth fixing.

The rest of the car is "driveable"-- she drove it five more miles to get home, and we can drive it to the dealer for repairs. It's awkward because the rear bumper has been crushed in to the point where the side pieces (attached at the back of the wheel wells) have popped free of their tab slots and are sticking out like earlobes. The wheel wells look fine and the car body might be fine if all of the impact was absorbed by the plastic bumper and the styrofoam liner.

However the back needs more work. What I'd like to do is open the hatch, remove the rear (plastic) bumper, and decide our next step. (DIY, or dealer repairs, or sell the car for parts.) The problem is that the hatch is jammed shut.

The hatch is caved in/forward about an inch and wedged down on top of the rear (plastic) bumper. The rear of the car body (that houses the latch mechanism) might have been deformed too, but I can't tell because the hatch is jammed so tightly on top of it.

The hatch is both jammed mechanically and latched electrically. When I push the latch button on the hatch ledge above the license plate, I can hear the latch retract electrically. However the electrical latch then resets mechanically, even if I keep my fingers on the button. It sounds like "CLICK whirrrrrrr". It operates the same as it always sounds, but it just won't stay unlatched.

I'm trying to unlatch the latch electrically so that I can mechanically pry open the hatch. I'd remove a fuse but I fear that will simply fail the latch in the shut position (like a dead battery). Does anyone know another way to unlatch it electrically-- and keep it that way-- so that I can get started on the mechanical leverage?

I can get into the back of the car through the back door, and after I remove the spare tire's cover & tray then I should be able to get at the latch mechanism where it's mounted on the frame. I guess the worst problem would be figuring out how to unbolt the latch mechanism from the frame of the car so that the latch drops free of the hatch catch.

Then I hope to just apply pressure to the hatch until it opens. Screw jack? Crowbar? "Gently" hammering a pry bar into the gap until the hatch pops free?

Another option would be to try to unbolt the hatch at its top hinge, but I think those bolts are outside the passenger compartment and under the frame of the hatch. I'd only be able to get at them if the hatch was fully raised.

I hope I'm missing a simple trick, but it'd be hard to make things worse than they already are.

Photos to follow in a few hours.

 

Thanks, that HubPages post helped a lot!

The latch was also fouled with dried grease and wouldn't retract when I operated the little lever. I finally unbolted the whole latch assembly from the interior and lifted the hatch.

The metal mounting base for the latch is built up around the rear body frame, but the base is made of relatively thin metal. The frame and the hatch seem fine but the mounting base had been dented in nearly an inch by the impact. I pounded the mounting base back into shape with hammer & punch, and then I cleaned & lubricated the latch. The hatch shuts & opens smoothly now but the latch has a bit of vertical play. If it rattles or leaks air on the highway then I'll adjust the latch mechanism and build up the area around the contact point where the hatch engages with the latch.

The plastic rear bumper covers a metal beam or girder. At first I thought the collision had dented the beam in around the center of the rear. However when I unbolted the beam from the frame, the beam seems to have been formed with a gentle curve. The plastic bumper took a beating but the beam is in good shape. The beam's brackets (which bolt to the car's rear frame) are deformed-- especially on the right side-- but I can get all of that back together.

The plastic bumper is scraped and dented but I'll push that back into shape. The biggest challenge will be reconnecting all the little machine screws and pushpins. Several of the pushpins seem to be missing (Fell out over the last 10 years? Sheared off during the collision?) but I'll replace those from our local auto parts store.

The front bumper took a beating when it rammed into the leading car, but that cleaned up fine. We lost the front license plate and its mounting ring during the collision and couldn't find it afterward. The police asked us to cancel the old plates and get a new set from the DMV. (Car thieves and burglars apparently love using old license plates.) Now we'll have to figure out a better way to install the front license plate, with or without a new trim ring.

I'll re-assemble everything tomorrow. It's not pretty but it's functional.

 

Yep. She never even saw the truck in her mirrors-- her first sign of trouble was the impact. After that she was slamming on her brakes to (unsuccessfully) avoid the car in front. We saw the truck's license plate as we were going across H-1 to pull off the road, but I don't know whether it was too damaged to drive or if they just kept on going.

By the time we crossed six lanes of traffic to get to a safe stopping point, and finished the conversation with the guy of the car we'd hit in front of us, the pickup was gone. But the police know who it was and they're following up.

Hard to say. My spouse is generally reluctant to change lanes or weave through rush-hour traffic-- she just gets in line and maintains the spacing. I don't think she cut off the pickup, and Hawaii drivers are waaay mellower than most Mainland metropolitan highways. Neither of us ever saw the driver, let alone their gender.

I think the pickup's driver was just inexperienced or distracted. Or maybe they were checking an important text message...

Now that I've seen where the damage is worst I think that the pickup must have sped up, changed lanes to the left, and slammed into her as they got into her lane.

We're in our 50s so we're keenly aware of that. Her right knee banged the key fob in the dash but 24 hours later she feels fine. She hit the brakes fast enough that the deceleration into the car in front was much gentler than the acceleration by the pickup from behind. But it took an hour for the adrenaline to leave her system.

Exactly. The frame of the hatch is still aligned, but the metal shell can't be hammered out. The frame of the car is fine, but the metal around the hatch latch isn't worth restoring. The bumper is permanently scratched and gouged. The insurance company would've balked at the labor cost vs the value of a 10-year-old Prius.

The car is fine mechanically. I wouldn't pay to repair trim, and I'm really glad we never paid for collision insurance on it.

For those members with USAA insurance, filing the "claim" (really just a report) only took 10 minutes on their mobile app. They followed up with a phone call and that was it.

 

After a couple hours of rebuild, I'm going to have to buy parts.

The frame of the rear hatch is fine, although the outer sheet metal is damaged. The Prius body underneath the hatch (where the lock/latch motor is attached) was beaten in until it jammed the rear hatch in the lock. I was able to push the body's frame back out (with the car jack and a 4"x4") until the rear hatch shuts smooth & tight. Unfortunately the latch motor can't seem to rotate the actuator with enough torque to release the hatch. That part is widely available, especially on eBay salvage.

I rediscovered the SKS sensor for the back hatch/locks, thanks to this thread:
What is this part? Is it safe to remove? | PriusChat
But that part seems to be fine. I didn't have to mess with it.

The bracket arms (which attach the aluminum impact bar to the body of the car) are both crushed and deformed. Those seem to be available from a parts store and online too. It's a good thing that they crumpled before the big aluminum beam, and they're probably a lot cheaper too.

The "worst" part is the plastic rear bumper. I was able to hammer it back into shape but the right side is gouged and twisted. The slots and clips on the right rear fender were either torn off by the collision or won't stay connected now. I'll check on a new plastic rear bumper but we'll give the old one a few days to see if it remolds itself to its former shape. I could always fasten it to its underlying plastic retainer with a few machine screws.

So far she's good. It's been nearly 48 hours, and she says that last night's water aerobics class went fine.

I guess it's better to be rear-ended (and slammed into the seat/headrest) than to be hit from the front or sides.

We buy ibuprofen in bulk for my damaged knees. I wish it was chocolate-flavored or at least chocolate-coated...

Thanks! The previous owner did that about 20 years ago. FuturaStone lasts a lot longer when it's out of the Hawaii sunshine. Even in the garage there's always a couple of stones spalling off and getting stuck under swinging doors or in tire treads. It's also miserable to lay on unless you use a piece of cardboard or a mat. The epoxy is not at all resistant to dirt or some fluids (like transmission, brake, or radiator fluids) and it doesn't clean up very well.

The best way to clean it (every decade or so) is to use a carpet cleaner's rotary jet spray (hot water, like 150 degrees) and its brushes. That cuts down on the mess and it doesn't break the FuturaStone free. Our carpet-cleaner guy thought it was pretty funny, too, but the job went quickly. His machine sucked up most of its water spray but it still took a week for the leftover water to evaporate out from under the stones.

The driveway and the lanais barely lasted 10 years before we had to have their FuturaStone scraped off and replaced with stamped concrete.

 

I've put it all back together, and it's "good enough".

The mounting arms for the impact bar were $60 each at the dealer. They're a little cheaper online but once the Hawaii shipping fees were added in the savings was not worth the wait. The mounting area for the bars is still distorted and misaligned from the collision damage but there's enough room in the impact bar's holes for the studs of the arms to fit. (Oddly enough, the nuts on the studs are English instead of metric-- 9/16"-- I had to buy a deep socket to reach inside the impact bar to tighten them over the stud.) It went together without any fuss and I could torque it tightly. It's ready to do its job again.

The back bumper is permanently dented, distorted, and a little torn. It wraps around the fenders but the tabs & slots around the wheel well wouldn't engage tightly enough to hold it down. I eventually cut off the (damaged) right-rear corner of the impact bar and shaved off some of its styrofoam padding to get the bumper to wrap around and stay on the fenders. The biggest challenge was pulling out the plastic body pins under the wheel wells (to take off the bumper) and then getting them back in. I elected not to spend the $300 for a new bumper yet, but if this damaged bumper continues to tear (or falls off) then I'll buy a new one.

The liftback latch actuator was just over $360 from the dealer (and apparently machined from a gold ingot). I certainly overpaid, but I opted for speed and convenience instead of eBay. There's a big difference in the new actuator's noise and speed, too, so that old latch was wearing out months before the collision. And the new latch even has a little yellow lanyard pre-installed to tug open the hatch manually from the inside. I hope I get another 10 years out of it.

The frame of the liftback fits tightly with no wobbles or air noise. The outside sheet metal around the Prius logo is still dented in but my repair attempts would just make it look worse. Maybe the damage will caution other drivers to think twice before they get close to her car.

We bought a new license plate frame for the front bumper, and it screwed in with no problems. There's plenty of room behind the front bumper, along with another thick piece of styrofoam padding.

We have UM/UIM on our policy (along with liability) but I'm more concerned about the insurance bureaucracy. I didn't want to lose control of the car and have them try to total it or give it a salvage title. We have it back on the road in four days without any hassle of repair shops or paperwork.

USAA says that our premiums are not affected by our claim history when the incident is not our fault. I'm reluctant to test that commitment.