My Daily Car Is Wounded

[kangaroosa]

Well, Mothers Day turned a bit sour for me. I was driving in a straight line down Springvale road when a Commodore failed to give way, and decided to make a right hand turn right across infront of me. My front drivers side collided with his lhs front gaurd. 40-50kmh impact.....one of the less violent ones i have been in.

The Panel shop quoted at least $5000 to fix the damage using genuine parts. Considering the car is insured for $4550, he suggested that it will be an economical write off. The assessor came and looked at the car whilst i was at work, am i'm yet to hear what his decision is.

 

The visual damage consists of Front Gaurd, Bonnet (payed to have that resprayed 6 months ago :cool: when the car was in the panel shop being repaired after a Mazda 6 rear ended me), Bumper, Headlight, metal trim under grill, rhs section of the radiator support panel, most likely the inner gaurd/engine bay where the top of the front gaurd bolts on.

The car drives fine, and luckily the suspension and chassis were spared.

 

If they write it off (due to the expense to fix it) hopefully i will have the opportunity to buy it back. All being well, i'll do most of the work and have a panel shop respray it and fix the bent radiator support panel.

However, if a panel shops price for a cash job comes in under budget, i'll probably just handball it to them.

 

To top it all off, the 3rd party is uninsured. So hopefully the legal side of things don't drag out too long, and i either get a payout or have my car repaired soon.

[ancullen]

Glad to hear you're okay and it was only a relatively minor accident. It's a pity about the car though. If it is written off, the insurance company may get an auction company like Pickles to sell it, so you could buy it back (fairly cheap) at auction. Or the company may sell it directly to a wrecker, in which case there's not a lot you can do.

[flat out]

a guy that works for dad busted up his ae82 pretty bad, insurance company payed him out like 4 grand and hes buying the ae82 back for like $30 (going off what the insurance fella is telling him)

 

you don't really have a problem Darren as its one less Nissan on the road :cool:

 

jokes of cause

[JiP]

Even tho the other guy isn't insured, go through your insurance and he'll have to pay THEM back. When i had my accident i decided to pay them back in installments.

Edited May 17, 2007 by JiP_01

[coln72]

Looks like you need to by that white rolla near Castlemaine.... :cool:

[7shades]

Just remember that in cases of statutory writeoffs the insurance company will only give you ONE chance to buy the car back... if your offer isn't good enough then you miss out. Rule of thumb is to offer 10% of the insured value. Legally speaking, as soon as its declared written off it becomes the property of the insurance company... so they will cancel any remaining rego left on it and pocket the pro-rata refund.

Bearing this in mind though, if its declared a repairable writeoff and you end up buying it back, it will ALWAYS be marked as an RWO even if you fix it up and re-register it. So you'll need to get a new RWC (or whatever you lot call it down there) and fresh rego... Being blackmarked on the SEVS register will make it difficult to sell later, but if you're just gunna hang on to it and drive it until it dies in the arse that shouldn't be a concern.

 

Just thought I'd whack all that up in case there was anything you (or anybody else) weren't aware of. Tell me to mind my own beeswax if'n ya like :cool:

[kangaroosa]

Well, the assessor called today and confirmed that its a total loss (economic write off/repairable write off). I will be getting paid out $4150 and get to keep my car. The car is insured for $4550, but i am being charged $400 to buy it back.

 

I just called the claims department and they confirmed that the paperwork has been lodged. I have to speak to the bloke in charge in the morning, to find out exactly what the situation is. I asked if its illegal for me to be driving the car now, and was informed that my car is classed as a write off on his computer and that my car is not isured anymore. Oh great!

 

So now i just put some springs back in my Corolla, and am trying to find a family member to take it for a wheel alignment either tomorrow or Saturday so i can drive a Registered and Insured car to work next week!!

Unfortunately I am working on Saturday too, so its looks like i will have to get a cover note from an insurance company tonight to get me by for 2 days.

 

I am going to hit the wreckers on Sunday to pick up the necessary parts to get the old girl back on the road and in RWC, hopefully within the next few weeks. Hopefully the inner gaurd is not too damaged. That also means that i will have to cancel the Rego, and re-register it when the car is back in a road worthy state.

 

At least i will be interstate for the next week or two for work, so my car wont be getting driven. I will be in Penrith from Wednesday to Friday next week and I will be in Cannon Hills (aparently 5mins North of Brisbane CBD?) the following Monday for a few days.

 

Thanks for the well wishes too guys. :cool:

[Wood§tok]

strangelly enough, once a car is written off, you can never register it again. or so the story goes.

 

sorry to hear about the acco btw. car crashes suck balls.

 

 

cheers.

[ancullen]

There is such thing as a repairable write off. Or is that only in the NT?

[kangaroosa]

There is such thing as a repairable write off. Or is that only in the NT?

 

Yes, you are right. There are two types of write off, that i know of. Repairable (economical write off) and Structural write off (the one woodstock is thinking of). Both of which exist in Victoria as well as the NT. Possibly other states?

Mine is repairable, and will be repaired.

Edited May 18, 2007 by kangaroosa

[demuire]

Hopefully the inner guard and supporting structures aren't too badly damaged. I had a minor bingle with my SV21 Camry sometime last year, about 10km/h into a guardrail, externally it didn't look overly bad (cracked indicator, broken parker and headlight, no damage to bonnet) and when I started to take the car apart I realised the inner guard was a fair bit more bent than I would have liked... I've now replaced all the external panels, but some of the bolt holes still don't line up.

[kangaroosa]

I had a bit of a play this morning with it. I've got the inner gaurd all hammered out and sort of resembling a straight car. The inner gaurd faired better than i expected actually. Luckily the bumper reinforcement/support bar took a heap of the impact. I will have to wait for new panels to arrive before i can fine tune it and make sure the gaurds will bolt up.

 

Also got a few quotes on parts (Bonnet, Front Bar and reinforcement bar, Front Gaurd,Headlight and Indicator, Filler Panel). $720 from the first place (dreamers!) and $563 delivered to my door from another. I could get them much cheaper at a wreckers, but finding a car that has all the parts i need proved to be harder than expected. I would have to pull apart at least 3 cars from two different wreckers to get all the necessary undamaged parts that I need. Let me tell you, that these cars are not as easy to work on as a Corolla. Everything is bolted to each other. To get to one simple part, you need to pull the whole front assembly off to get to it.

Melbourne has finally got some decent rain and all the wreckers have pools of water under the cars. I would rather pay a few hundred extra to have all the parts removed and delivered rather than lay in a pool of oily water. So I am going with the $563 quote as above. Hopefully will have them Tuesday.

 

Heres two pics of before and after I hammered the inner gaurd out this morning.

[kangaroosa]

Well folks, the car is finally painted and re-assembled. Thanks to the insurance company for economically writing it off, I was able to spend the money upgrading/fixing my car.

 

$1300 in parts and paint......considering two panel shops quoted $5000. I sourced the new panels/parts and bolted them on. Some slide hammer work on the radiator support panel and inner gaurd was needed. Then the car was sent off to Bucket Panels in Moorabbin, where they did great job of matching paint colours and blending it into the existing panels.

 

The car was also treated to a new Exedy Sports Tuff clutch. New front slotted rotors and Bendix GCT pads. New driveshaft oil seals and 4 brand new Yokohama S Drive tyres and clear side indicators.

 

Now all i have to do is get a Roadworthy Certificate, register and Insure it.

Fortunately, Shannons Insurance didnt notify VICROADS of the incident (probably because of the lack of structural damage) thus I don't have to get a VIV inspection (Vehicle Identification Validation) which costs $440+.

 

Replacing the clutch did reveal one sad story though. Whilst undoing the flywheel bolts, I noticed the engine has bugger all compression. I could rotate the flywheel in full revolutions by hand.

The gearbox was hard enough to change by myself. I don't even want to think about dropping the motor as well.

 

Edited June 24, 2007 by kangaroosa

[7shades]

Nicely done.

 

No compression eh?

 

*cough* GTiR conversion *cough*

[kangaroosa]

Mmm SR20......the thought has crossed my mind many a time. However i quickly snap back to reality, that the Pulsar is my daily. The only reason I bought this car was because that its fuel efficient and unbelievably reliable.

So when the time comes, i'll drop the engine and just freshen it up.

The car still drives fine and am still getting 520kms from 45L, so I don't expect to be dropping the engine any time soon.

 

Forgot to add that I scored some Genie extractors from the wreckers for $48. The car had a full exhaust, however the rear muffler was welded on and rusted out. So i'll either go back with a hack saw,or just get a new exhaust made.