Un-F******-believable. I Have had the car for barely 45 days. Seeing as how the number of nice days to take the car out for a spin this year are dwindling, I decided to go for a nice drive. Cold Chicago fall air had the turbos singing, then just as I am 3 blocks from home the moron pulls out in front of me.

So to set the scene, 4 lane road (Randall Rd.) runs north south. I am going North just under the speed limit (~46-49 in a 50) as I come up to this intersection at Hopps and Randall. this intersection has center turn lanes and there are probably 8 cars waiting to turn west and on the south bound side probably 3 cars waiting to turn East. I am in the lefthand lane of my 2 lane NB side and am approaching the intersection. It is just becoming night time (flip ups are on) and I just begining to enter this incredibly long intersection (if you know the area I am sure you are aware of what I mean).

Suddenly I see these head light dodge in my lane from the SB turn lane trying to cross traffic. The other driver must have suddenly noticed me ~30 feet away (the stacked up cars I am sure made it difficult to see me. My seven is setup for autocrossing so it rides rather low). He hesitates (hesitation kills....) and then suddenly decidses to try and floor it to get out of the intersection. Needless to say I am now completely to the floor on the brakes with no where to go unless I want to take a head on with another vehicle. Needless to say his 99 cutlass doesn't clear the intersection in time an I end up clipping him on the rear bumper completely on the right front-end. Both airbags depoly, windshield cracks, front right side is completely destroyed with oil leaking from the second oil cooler that was installed. Hood is slightly crumpled, needless to say the right frontend is toast and who knows about everything else under the hood.

Thank god I walked away and he did too...although he had the audacity to ask me why I hit him!!! I told him he got hit because he decided to make a stupid move. Cop shows up and tells the other guy, he is at fault. I get no tickets and I think he gets 2.

Needless to say I am afraid my insurance company is going to try to total this vehicle. WIth the upgrades on it the vehicle is easily worth more than the BB value. This car was about as mint as I could find. ANy advice on how to keep this from being a TOTAL loss?

 

wow man...sorry to hear that, I am familiar with the area as well.

That really sucks, i hope it all works out....got any pics?

 

Wow... That's freagin bs dude. I woulda punched the guy in the face. Lol jk but i would be really upset to man. Sorry for the loss

 

Tell them your willing to settle for slightly less than the KBB cost of it being totaled. Tell them this is the only way you can be "made whole". Use the words "made whole".

 

Luckily my father in law is an automobile painter. He is coming out tomorrow to look at the vehicle with me to get a sense for the cost to repair. I will get some pictures tomorrow and post them up.

 

Made whole for less than KBB? does that mean they will try to do worse?

I have Country Financial for insurance and they have always been great in the past.

 

Sorry to hear about that bro. Just glad you made it out ok.

 

https://www.rx7club.com:80/showthread.php?t=789306

Read this post, a lot of the guys had some good advice.

 

If your insurance writes it off as a total loss, depending on your State's laws, you may be able to purchase it back at "salvage" cost. My friend did that to his RX8 when some drunk idiot rear ended it.

He bought another RX8, took the parts he wanted from the wreck and parted out the rest for a profit.

 

Jeez man, sorry to hear. Obviously this is everyones' worst fear when driving in crowded areas (dont know how crowded chi-town is) but i go through the same thing.

My town has 2 streets, which runs parallel to each other, about 15 blocks long each. NONE of them have stop signs or street lights. The blocks that connect them have stop signs which makes the long parallel streets a highway.

That being said, if you're on the connecting road, to go from the one long road to another, you better have your windows down, radio off to hear any cars coming because they DONT STOP FOR NOTHING.

Sometimes i take the long way home, just to avoid congested areas where people normally gain speed (or blocks that dont have blind spots from houses on the corner with alot of gardening that are like 20 feet tall lol).

It really sucks. My car is low too so i know how you feel. People dont recognize you, especially trucks.

Sorry for the damage. I dont know how you can keep a vehicle from being a total loss. I guess if you know for sure it isnt (like no frame damage), just tell the insurance company you will try to fix it.

 

The car is still yours, take your parts off now.

 

total it and buy it back you get your insurance money plus you can put your own parts on it but thats if you have a good insurance company some of them give jack because the car is so old and they don't know the value of the car.

 

"Made whole" means you want your car to be like the accident never happened. If they total it and give you KBB, you are not made whole. If they total it, you may be able to buy it back but it would have a salvage title. It must be converted to a reconstructed title before you can license it. Then, it will always have a reconstructed title.
If you can get them to give you -just under- KBB and you fix it yourself, it mayl show the wreck on a carfax but the title will remain clean.

 

Something similar happened to me a couple years back. I was t boned, the other kid was at fault. I started to deal with his insurance company, they low balled me for more than a month. Just get as much as you possibly can out of them then buy the car back from them. I had to have them bring in a collector car appraiser before they finally got close to what the car was actually. After you buy it back part it out and save the parts you want. In the end the insurance paid me $14,000, and I got the wrecked fd, then I maid another $13,000 parting out the car. This was plenty for me to find another fd in good condition, fly out to check it out, then get it shipped home, liscence it and start enjoying it. Hope everything works out for you. Keep the thread updated.

 

I got my father in law out to look at the car and he says I am lucky. I tagged the guys bumper in a way that my car glanced off of him as I ripped his back bumper off. He thinks it is definitely repairable but he is speculating may be up to 9K to 10K range depending on the cost to replace airbags/dash, and if anything is bad under the hood now, or a couple K less, if all checks out.

He said I was super lucky that the frame and suspension didn't suffer any damage as that tends to take out trannys when they snap and fly back. Now I get to start my fight.

I found an autobody shop that (reputation at least is) fights for it's customers to get things done right. As you can see from the pictures, I am looking at a new windshield, right fender, hood, front bumper, 2nd oil cooler, head light and markers, R1 lip, passenger side mirror, dashboard, airbags, and who knows what else under the hood. My rear hatch also buckled at the impact and you will see some crease marks there as well. My Father in law says the fram is straight with minor to ZERO damage to it. I am all kinds of worried about my trans, turbos, engine, and aftermarket gauges/avcr being ok. It's the mechanicals that are the scary part.

Question is finding the parts. I will be talking to this body shop tomorrow. I know finding parts isnt going to be easy, but if I do get a chance to be "made whole" in the situation I may be able to replace the parts with new aftermarket/JDM parts vs junkyard/ LKQ.

Man I am still pissed...

I will keep everyone posted.

 

Are are some more pics

 

Parts is not going to be a problem for you. Mazda stills stocks parts for the FD.

 

99 Spec that bitch! (if its worth reparing)

 

99 spec would be perfect... here's hoping

 

the same thing happened to me recently. but mine involved bad weather and a tree . anyways like some of the others suggested, my car was totalled and my insurance paid off the rest of the loan and i bought it back from them as salvage for a grand. that way I was able to keep all the parts I had put on it and can part out everything else (you can make some pretty good money just by parting out what you don't want) and put them all in another rx7. that would be my suggestion. Also if your engine is still good, which it looks like it should be, you could buy a roller and throw your engine in it and sell it to make a good chunk of change too. Just my .02 and what I did with mine. Good luck with the car man, hope it works out.

 

to be honest..

if the airbags hadn't deployed.. it would of been an easy fix..

sometimes they do more harm then good..

otherwise

99 spec face lift
CF hood
sleek headlight kit
and a fender

and ur good to go

rims chasis and suspension look straight

 

What caused the rear hatch to buckle? Is that an indicator that the frame flexed enough to do that without buckling, since you said there was no frame damage?

 

Yes. Total loss.

 

Well it looks fixable for sure. That's hardly a severely damaged car by any strech.

However, the rear hatch damage does concern me.

It needs to go onto a frame machine at your insurance company's expense to find out exactly what bent and how badly.

Assuming that insurance is taking care of this, I doubt that gets written off, theres alot of damage there but idk about $10k+ worth.

I fixed a FAR worse FD myself for around $4000. As long as the front frame isn't damaged it's all superficial. But why'd the hatch bend then? That is weird to me for sure.


Ignore any comments you get about "FD's aren't like other cars, you can't fix it" it's just like any other car and they're easy to fix, just like the rest of them.


If you decide to fix it yourself i have many of the parts you'd need, including a good hatch.

One other thing - if oil is leaking from it I'd make it so that it can't be started until that is repaired. Last thing you want is someone in a bodyshop driving the car around not realizing that there's no oil and destroying the motor. They can push it.

 

ouuuch...that guy deserves an *** kickin..save the parts if worst case scenario!