quick fix for bent rear axle/ hub? (please advise!)

[tylerwatts53]

Hi folks,

I was rear-ended in my '07 Yaris sedan a few days ago. The other driver clipped my right rear corner, and utterly smashed the right rear rim. When I put the spare on to drive it home, I noticed the right rear hub was significantly bent in at the front due to the collision; in other words, the right rear tire now has maybe 1/2" of toe-in. Naturally, this makes the handling not so great--although the car is still driveable--and of course is going to tear up that right rear tire in short order.

I'm looking to keep this baby road-worthy at minimal expense--I just don't think it's worth fixing up perfect (shop quoted $4900), especially because the car is probably not worth the repair cost (car has 186K miles). So I just want to hammer the body dents out a bit, put a new tail light and bumper cover in, and just keep driving it like that (I don't care about cosmetics!).

I'm thinking that to take out the toe-in and straighten that right rear hub I can pull the hub bolts and put a washer or two between the inner face of the hub and the axle flange on the front 2 hub bolts. I should be able to get the rear wheels parallel this way, but I would be increasing the rear track width (pushing the right rear wheel out maybe 1/4").

Any thoughts? Is this safe? Will it mess up the car's overall handling/ driveability, or is this a good idea to keep the car going without dumping a lot of money into a whole new rear axle assembly? Thanks.