[mondi]

if something is written off from flood damage, and can be re registered, would it be that hard? obviously the car would need to be stripped and dryed out thoroughly for longevity of the car, and of course the electronics... but that asside, getting it re registered, it would be structurly sound (no physical damage) so it would be easyish....?

The laws have changed and are a lot stricter now. A repairable write off would normally just have cosmetic damage, etc but the repair cost was not going to be justified due to the market value of the vehicle. Buy a repairable write off cheap at the auctions, do the work yourself and you can have a cheap car but even that is harder now days due to the declining values of second hand cars. Who wants to buy a wreck, spend 3 months fixing it and putting it back on the road when for not a lot more you could probably buy a good one on the S/H market.

But I digress, a Stat write off would probably be a flood damaged vehicle or a structurally damaged vehicle. If the vehicle is classed as Stat write off, it goes into a database so it can be kept track of. In order to put a Stat write off vehicle back on the road, it needs to be engineered and VASSed, in Victoria at least. The repairs have to be done back to OEM specs. An example, lets say a chassis x-member was originally held on with 4 spot welds, the engineer would want to see this welded back on as close as possible to OEM specs. It does not have to be spot welded back on but maybe plug welded with the plug welds as close as possible to were the original spot welds were. You could not, say, seam weld the x-member on, because this changes the structural strength of the chassis and in doing so would effect the crumple zones of the car. Once the repairs are given the all clear - the vehicles VIN could be removed from the database as Stat write off.

In the case of a flood damaged car, this would not be a huge problem because as you say there is no structural damage so passing an inspection would not be too hard. But being flood damaged it does cause quite a lot of damage. Diffs, gearboxes and engines would be full of water, the interior would have to be fully stripped, as in seat covers off the frames, etc. There would be hundreds of small components in the car that would be full of water, which may work OK when dried out but would have a significant reduction in life span. Not to mention the increase in body corrosion due to water getting into place were it normally wouldn't with wet weather driving, etc.



Phew.  Out of breath now.   


* edit *   Just to note - flood damaged cars normally don't have a lot of physical damage as such, unless they have gone for a swim and bumped into a few things as they went. And because they are pretty much undamaged, it makes them an easy target for a quick and easy "rebirth". They may present well and seem reliable to start with but not far down the track they turn nasty and will open a rather large money pit under them.