Minor crunch today...

fiatmonkey

Tim Hoover
:mad3:

Parked (in the car) in front of my daughters school just dropper her off. A driver comes backing out of their driveway moving pretty quick and hits me almost t-bone angle but damaged my front quarter/front facia under headlight. Totally their fault. I made a claim right away but they aren't calling their insurance and now said it was my fault???:nuts: Why do I get all the jerk-offs???

People make fun of me for parking the FARTHEST from other cars in the parking lot, or carefully picking parking stalls away from traffic...

Doesn't look too bad, but it's a tight fit behind the panels so we shall see. I can't get a full on estimate (and not be on the hook) until the person who hit me comes to their senses and calls their insurance.

IMG_00205.jpg
 
I would maybe call police and file a complaint, see if that helps? I can't believe some people, the nerve.
 
Most people ARE decent

But then, most people don't collide with me. :)

Sorry to hear of the collision, Tim, that sucks.

Don't bother with the other party anymore (they've shown you their true character by claiming it was your fault), get your insurance company involved (they like to know about this stuff, even if it wasn't your fault).

When something like this happens, I file a police report and include as much info (license #, description of driver, photos, etc.) as I can. That puts the collision on an official record and helps my insurance company begin their own investigation (I carry underinsured coverage).

Insurance companies work together, behind the scenes, to figure out what happened and who pays. Even if you don't have underinsured coverage, you can usually ask your insurance company for help getting the other party's insurance company involved.

Best of luck!
 
Ouch Tim - I feel for ya. Just report it to your insurance and let them know who the offending party's insurance is and they'll take it from there.
 
Tim,

Sorry about your mishap. Hope the whole incident didn't piss you off too much. Thanks for your info on the Abarth.
 
Tim,

Sorry about your mishap. Hope the whole incident didn't piss you off too much. Thanks for your info on the Abarth.

Thanks all. I was able to get in touch with the other party actually and got things turned around after I threatened all kinds of legal stuff (mostly BS) but in the end I suggested they "do the right thing" and I think that was it.

So, the car is now at a "certified" State Farm auto body shop. I lucked out in that the auto body shop they recommend happens to be a pretty good one close by and has a lot of good reviews. A lot quicker/easier than going the route of me picking the shop, having a SF guy doing an assessment (2 days till it could be done), hoping they approve, estimate and shop $ match up, etc.

Stay tuned...
 
Sorry to hear that, Tim

but good that the damage appears to be slight and that the jerk-wad has apparently reconsidered his or her culpability. Threats often help to clear the offender's mind.
 
but good that the damage appears to be slight and that the jerk-wad has apparently reconsidered his or her culpability. Threats often help to clear the offender's mind.

Thanks!

An update: Everything came together and I got the car back Tuesday. The body work is flawless! The damage was nearly ALL the front facia and only on the plastic piece that runs the entire front end (headlight to headlight). This piece is plastic so the way they fixed it was using heat to get the shape back and reshape whatever is left. That is the good news.

The BAD news is that even at inspection, I noticed a slight difference in color/shade between the entire front plastic piece and the engine hood or fenders (both are metal). They claimed it is "common" for the plastic parts to be a slightly different color. However I don't see it on the rear sections or any other sections where the plastic meets the metal. I took the car anyway after making it clear I wasn't 100% satisfied. I showed the area fixed to numerous people and didn't say anything about the color/shade and almost everyone can see a difference :sigh:

So what the heck do I do? Take it back? They "guarantee" their work although that is probably up to interpretation of what that really means ;)

I am going to drive the car to a dealer and park it next to a white 500 (abarth if they have one) and compare, take some detailed hi-res pics, etc and take the car back to them. Not so happy...
 
De javu to what happened with your X1/9. Good to hear it's sorted.

Not exactly the same, but I somehow seem to get into it with jerks it seems, regardless of their profession (the X19 crunch was done by a police officer - there is a thread on that somewhere...).

I haven't done anything further with the off color paint but I will be taking it back soon...
 
Test Panels

I think that's the whole point of painting "Test Panels", matching the color before painting the car. The body shop just didn't do their job well enough. In my opinion, giving them the opportunity to try again & do better is the right thing to do.

Brian
 
shades of...

as I stated in another thread, although black and white are "tints" to lighten or darken a color they have a multitude of shades also.
PPG, DuPont, ditzler all have different blends for the color "white 123"
and based on the painters eye, all are different. and paint is mixed in huge drums and have a batch code so to speak, so the batch number for one drum is 1112 and the next batch is 1113 they will differ slightly...a little more yellow, a little more blue... ya get my drift here?
check with the shop who painted it, they might have a backroom deal with one paint supplier and their white is the one they use(not the correct) one for your car.
or maybe they had some paint left over from the 78 lebaron re spray last month and waste not want not.
dunno, but questions to ask for sure.
see ya in the DF
mikemo
 
non-matching paint

My wife hit a deer with the 500e. Had to replace the front bumper cover (and a headlight and a few other things fixed). When I picked up the car, the bumper cover was noticeably more yellowish than the fender. Actually only on the driver's side, since on the passenger side where they had to do some slight straightening of the fender they blended the paint, but not on the driver's side. Most people wouldn't notice it, unless you mentioned it, then it was obvious. I got the same "paint looks different on plastic vs metal fenders, it's normal" speech until I pointed out that the 500e that they have as a loaner that is the same Pearl White as mine doesn't have the same difference, than they quickly agreed to repaint :)
It was great to have another car there that is an exact clone of mine to compare since then they couldn't argue.
Stick to your guns and make the shop do it right :)
 
Tim over here the "top notch" repairers (usually do high end euro stuff) have a gadget that they put on the panel and it actually quantifies as a % how close it is to the original colour.

I was fortunate that the bloke I used to fix my wife's "blu sera" pearl Alfa 156 (I figured it was going to be impossible to match properly) had one and "tinkered" with the mix until he got to 99%. I couldn't pick the 1%. He did mention at the time that he THEN makes a slight adjustment for the fact that he is painting plastic rather than steel which will always show a colour difference if painted from the same gun.

Might be worth having a sniff around to see if you can find a painter with that tool - at least you'll have a hard number to show them to explain the difference - and can't be steamrolled about everyone's eyes being different or some nonsense.

Sorry - quick google search didn't help - but I did find a picture of the tool:
Colour-Matching.jpg
 
This is definitely a lesson you would think I should have learned years ago. There are no quick fixes to anything or at least not something where we expect quality (there are rare exceptions).

I haven't had a ton of time to go back to the shop but they told me they "guarantee" their work for whatever that is worth ;)

In the grand scheme of things, I have a lot more important things to worry about these days I guess.
 
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