I was evolved in a rear end collision with a pick up. The damage is not terrible just a dent above the tail light and some paint flaking off.

The driver of the ford truck that rear ended me was uninsured and had been drinking, but below .08

My insurance is giving me two options.
I want input on which route I should take.

Option
1) Total the car, insurance writes a check to me for the value of a 1982 RX7, I choose my own route on the body work and paint with the money they send me. (Dent repaired, and the whole rear of the car will be taken apart ie windows and seals, then cleared then the paint blended)
-this will be a better looking work but I run the risk of having a totaled or salvage title on the vin.

Option
2) Insurance does fix the damage but the cost to properly fix the damage will be close to the value of a 1982 RX7 and the body work will not be very good (dent repair and touch up paint)
-basically it will look like someone had a dent repaired and paint touched up, it will not look as good as new but the car will keep a clean title. Sounds like the end product will not turn out very well as I was told by the shop my insurance wants me going through was telling me.

pics of dent




I would like input on which route to go.

Can a totaled title car be insured and what goes along with a totaled title? Very interested in knowing more about this topic as I have little knowledge about it. I never plan on selling the car, **** does happen and I may need to sell it one day, how would a total title effect a sale.

Should I take the value of the car totaled money they send me and repair the dent and paint it later on my own dime? Or possibly fix on my own or with private help? Daily driven rx7 is bound to get another dent in it, sucks but I do share the road with drunk idiots.

I need to make a decision by this Friday. I want to be as informed as I can before I make a good/bad decision. I plan on parking the car until next summer (6 months) It is expensive and I wanna make sure it last until the day I have a proper ammount of money/time to enjoi it fully, little/big things come up and its hard not to get frustrated when things are so expensive, I want some time away before the rx drains my life/passion for rx7 anymore then it has.

Thanks, Aaron

 

Very important question Aaron.....
You plan on keeping this car for as long as possible? Or do you hope
to sell it? If you plan on selling it, pretty much EVER, a wrecked title
WILL drop the value by thousands of dollars. Regardless whether u
sell to an enthusiast or not. If this is going to be your car until you
can no longer drive it, then wreck it and repair it like it should. If you
plan on selling it, for the love of god, get the money, and spend it
on a real body shop.

I would highly suggest you take the money, then use it at a reputable
shop instead of trying to go through this shitty company they're sending
you to. It will take twice the work to fix someone elses mistakes. my 2c

 

Take the max $ that insurance will give you without totaling the car.
sue the mf that hit you in small claims for damage to the car. He should be in trouble with the state for not being insured....
take the 2 sums and fix the car correctly.
my 2 cents.....
i dont think that the insurance company can dictate where you take the car to get it fixed. They low ball the heck out of everything and steer you to their own shops, which is technically against the law in Wa.
get a couple estimates at a reputable shop where you would have the work done and negotiate with the insurance company.. its not particularly easy, but it is what you are paying for.

 

That sucks. Looks like there's no damage to the taillight, though, so that's lucky.

There's no problem with licensing or insuring a totalled car. My old Taurus was totalled the whole time I was driving it. It basically only affects the resale value.

 

BTW, what does the insurance company think the value of a 82 7 is?

 

Usually when the insurance company gives you "car total" money, if you want to keep the car, you have to buy it back from them (at a price lower than what they give you to account for the damage), they don't give let you keep the car also. At least that was the case with my Q45.

 

yeah, when i totaled my Alfa, i had to buy it back for 30% or something like that.
Check with zerodrift, he just went through this with his 2nd gen.

 

Aaron,

Speaking from experience, your insurance company can not dictate which body repair/paint shop you have to use. You can choose whichever shop you want, choose the shop that does the best job (usually is also the one that cost the most)

If you choose to total your car, you will need to have it inspected and then licensed by the state to make sure that it's drivable. I believe it is only a visual inspection. You will need to buy the car back from the insurance company and the insurance company will give you the difference. If you have more questions about this issue, ask our friend with the white GXL.

I also want to recommend a shop in Redmond that did the paint on my bumper (which you complimented btw *winks*) called Queen City Auto Rebuild. They do work on Lambos, Farraris, Audi 8s, etc so you can't go wrong and it is a lifetime warranty paint job.

You should keep records of EVERYTHING and if you do total it, in the future provide the documentation to any future buyer regarding the reason why it was totalled and you may still receive a fair amount back. Just my 2 cents.

 

Sorry to see Aaron.
As Rx7grl says, you do not have to use the co. they recommend. We can recommend haurys. There is info on their site about dealing with insurance companies also, that you might find helpful.

www.hauryscollision.com

Best of luck, hope it works out for you.
This is m by the way.

 

It's a Monday so I need a little clarification, your options are:

1) They total the car, write you a check and you buy the car back from them...then you use the money to repair the car properly. Your car will have a salvage title.

2) They pay to repair the car, but only up to the insured value of the car thus it would not be repaired properly.

So option "1" means that you'll have to put some extra money in to repair the car properly, but it will have a salvaged title.

Why can't you just do option "2," but repair it to your liking? Have the insurance pay for the repair up to the value of the car (or close to it) and you make up the difference. Same result as option "1" but without the salvage title.

What about the moron who hit you? I know he doesn't have insurance but why couldn't you make him pay some if not all of the repair expense.

BTW, what is the difference in value between a 1st gen with a salvage title and clean title? It can't be thousands of dollars can it?

Sorry to hear about your accident, I hope everything works out. Oh, RX7GRL is right, you can choose whatever shop you want.

 

I agree with jenkins. Take the money to repair sue the mother effer that hit you. Take the chunks of money and go to rx7 girls paint place and get a good job done. It isnt your fault that the idiot doesnt know how to drive. He should have to pay

 

man im gonna have to see this in person but i agree with Mai. i would go to where she got her car fixed. i think it looks great. if you never need any help with anything you got my number bro

 

Do not let them total it... Go get some estimates, then get the car appraised then find 3 similar cars that are selling and show that your car is worth 4-5k. Since there's only $1000 tops worth of damage then that won't total the car they'll just have to fix it. they can on ly total your car if the damage is worth more than 50% of the cars value. They're going to try and lowball you and tell you your car is only worth 1500, but do not let them!!! The value of the car is what it could have sold for 10 minutes before the accident. not the value of just the chassis. every drop of new paint, and pimped parts add to the value of your car. make them fix it, or take the ******* to court.

 

Dude, that sucks. I get on the forum after a long time not being here, and I see this. Your car is like my cars brother. They practically grew up together.

 

When my 1st 7 got totaled that's exactly what I had to do. Had an '88 T2 and they tried to tell me it was only worth 2500 when I bought it for 4k. I fought it and did the legwork to find several cars of the same year/condition, it will be hard for your insurance company to come up with solid (or fair) numbers on the car based on its age and general availability. The insurance companiess (if I'm not mistaken) only have a certain number of channels that they use to determine "fair value" for a vehicle and ebay/craigslist/enthusiast forums are not sources they consider by default. At the end of my long road I talked to several managers @ my insurance company which was painful, and eventually got them to raise the total offer from 2500 to 5500..

Hope this helps somewhat..

 

1st off thank you go's to all that give their advice, a lot to think about.

I'm not going to total the car, it is not the best options availible. I have thought about it and got some good opinions and optons from you all.
I really like the idea of paying a little of my own money on top to fix this correctly.

In the morning I'm going to call the caveman and get this straighten out, I have a even more reputable shop in Bellevue to do the work rather then the one in Kirkland my insurance wants me going through.
The shop in Bellevue charges almost $7 more per hour to do body work and paint then the shop in Kirkland and somehow they still have a $100 lower estimate. I think the Kirkland shop was trying to get intimate with my buttocks.

And Also a question for Chris.
Where did you have the car painted ?? iirc it was Macco ?
The lady in Bellvue tells me macco has a certain way they mix teh clear and paint so the blending can be done without clearing the entire rear of the car. I haven't gotten to talk to them yet and wanted to see if you could answer me that 1st

 

Yet another lesson I have learned the hard way.

Next time in the summer when I go to insure the beast,
I will have a auto appraiser look over the car/reciepts and have a actual value of the car and pay to insure it correctly. I breifly thought about this from time to time in the year I have owned it and never did it.
I feel stupid now.

 

Aaron, that car I pm'd you about is a GS in good cond,
buy it out from under me when we go look at it and I'll
help you tear out the stuff you need to rebuild yours. It
was super cheap so you should have some $$ left over
from your insurance (hopefully), plus a spare running 12A.

Gimme a call yo.

 

I talked with the superior auto adjuster on friday and as close as they could come was with in $300 dollars of fully fixing it without totaling it. So my plan is to bring out receipts and show that %69 (%70 is considered total loss) of the value is a lot higher then they believe or know.

their idea of the value of the car is much less then my idea and the amount receipts show, they are not going to know what hit them once I bring out 4'' of ordered receipts on Monday. Should have a clear idea next week what their plan is.

 

jd, that would be an insane amount of work haha.

someday I wanna follow through and do that and buy a very low mileage chassis. Talk about a huge project. It would be worth in teh long run I feel, we will see

 

AARON KEEP FIGHTING IT! ...talk to their supervisor and the supervisors supervisor etc...trust me you will not regret it...ask me how i know hahah

 

get it salvaged, buy it back, sell it. wait, whaaaaaat?

 

If you plan on always having it, I agree with one person - total it, sue, take the sum, fix, and get some good eatin while you wait.

 

the last two people really have no clue what they are talking about. In the last week I have learned that is exactly what not to do in this situation.

 

man this makes me sad..