can't have nuthin nice.

[fiver]

I dug the Mustang out today and took the Wife and Dawn up to Idaho Falls to work on some shot gun fitment.
as I was turning into the clubs road I turned the odometer over to 32-K miles.
we got there and set up the trap house and I fiddled with Dawns [my] Remington a bit and got it to shoot better for her.
[she finally got her first 25 straight and was working on her second when she lost her focus]
I got out the old SKB and started mocking things up.
don't laugh.
I was using some foam rubber, a bit of spandex, a piece of harder closed cell foam, some safety pins, and some duct tape.
[yes it worked]

anyway:
I had parked the Mustang out in the middle of the lot by itself.
at least 50' from anything and any other vehicles.
yep..
dude backs his truck into the side of it.
munches in the fender and scuffs up the tire, pushes it just enough to crack the windshield, and jams the fender against the hood.
the door missed the bent fender by just a hair and is able to open even though it looks like it shouldn't.
I had to stop on the way home and bend the fender up and out of the way cause every time I hit a bump it would rub the fender.

hopefully he didn't jam the shock tower over since it's part of the inner fender well.

looks like tomorrow will be spent talking to the insurance company and getting an estimate from the repair shop here in town.

 

[Brad]

Some days you're the pigeon and some days you're the statue

I hope he has good insurance, bet the repairs aren't gonna be cheap.

 

[Kevin Stenberg]

The guy must have been going awful fast to do that much damage!
Did you do the restoration? Or was it still factory new?

 

[Rick]

The insurance company will do everything they can to get the job done as cheap as possible using cheap parts etc. You don't have to fall for that crap, you have every right to have it returned to it's original glory no matter how much they scream and whine and deny. Hold your ground and demand your rights.

 

[Ian]

Wasn't one of the dudes you sandbagged the other day, was it?

 

[S Mac]

Wasn't one of the dudes you sandbagged the other day, was it?

Man, talk about getting even!

 

[fiver]

no... he is a new shooter just getting started [and it was his first day working at the club] he just retired from the military and is working at the club to fund his shooting.

I was trying to stay calm about it, I had just explained gun fitment and sight relationships to the guy like 5 minutes before.
he was interested in what I was doing to the SKB.
and I showed him my Winchester and how the sights aren't even close to lining up and why they should be ignored until the gun is shooting where your looking.
we went through negative and positive pitch, comb heights and poi-poa changes at distance, length of pull all that stuff.

it looks like the initial estimate is about 2-K with the provision about what else they find when they pull it down.
the rim got scuffed and they are 385$ each, I think that or the windshield is gonna be where they want to argue the price.
I had a small chip low down in the window and when he hit me it cracked all the way across.

I went down to my insurance company this morning and had Rayanne call his company. [USAA]
he had already called them and started a claim and took responsibility so that phone call went pretty smooth.
then I went down to Jeff's for the estimate and he was on the Berger website.
he had just finished up a mustang that had hit a deer with the same fender so he knew all the parts and pieces needed.
Rayanne had the estimate and forwarded it to their claim service before I even walked out the door.
now I just wait and see what they say back.

 

[Brian Palmer]

USAA is pretty good company hope they work with you like they do their members.

Some states....PA anyway...law the insurance has to make the vehicle right not "well...its fixed". Had a insurance company try that with me with a STI I had and someone backed into. I won that argument.

Love Mustangs. Most forums my handle is Mustangpalmer1911. I started with a 1991 GT Convertible, then had a 70 Mach 1. Currently Stang less but have a 1968 F100 Step side with a 429CJ.

 

[quicksylver]

Man..I feel your pain...

Nice of the guy to follow through BUT..I had the same situation..I finally talked a guy out of an original 69 Mach 1 that had been in a garage for years...

When I got it I had to replace all the hoses ,tires etc with NOS parts..it even had an original AC unit..

After getting it road worthy I took it out one evening..I went to our local box store..it had an easy 60 car parking lot...I parked the furthest I could get from the door, thinking no one else would go there..mind you there were no other cars in the parking lot..

Some A(*-H(%^$#..pulls in parks right next to me and kicks his drivers door open...slam into the side of mine...nice dent...breaks the stripe on the door too.."Oh I am sorry",

"I'll get my insurance company to fix that"..well guess what you can't fix "original"...your buying the car...

I swear there is something subconscious going on there...

 

[Rick]

In 96 I had a brand new F-250 Super Duty, had it for 3 weeks when I get rear ended on the freeway. The guy had insurance and I met his adjuster at the dealership where I had it towed when he inspected my truck. He says they won't pay for a rental while it's being fixed, won't use OEM parts, can Bondo the tailgate, bend the step bumper out straight and a list of other things he says they won't fix or do. He says there isn't enough money in this policy for anything else.

It was an incredibly easy thing to instantly change his mind on every single thing they wouldn't do. All I said was, look this is a brand new truck, I didn't have a Bondo'd up piece of crap before he hit me and I'll not have one now. All I want is my truck fixed RIGHT and so far my back doesn't hurt. It was amazing how fast he became incredibly accommodating and just couldn't do enough to make me happy. Instantly there was plenty of money for a rental and to fix the truck right.
.

 

[Intheshop]

Dang, that ain't good at all Fiver.Here's hoping you get a new set of Fr,triple Penske's for the trouble.

 

[fiver]

an A arm set up with adjustable Penske shocks is about 4800$ [parts only]
when I talked to an adjuster this afternoon she said how many miles do you have on this?
me 32,000.
her. how many since the last oil change?
I dunno not even 3,000, that was like 2 years ago.

they sent us an APP to take pictures of everything including the stereo.
I doubt they are gonna go much past the 6 disc/mp-3 player/1,000 watt system to figure out which model I have.
I got every option available except the sun roof.
the only upgrade left was the cobra.

 

[waco]

Ugh.....sorry man.......

 

[Pistolero]

Bummer. I have had USAA for over 40 years, and they have been good to me when somebody hit
me. Hope they are good to you.

Hmmm, actually just figuring, I have had USAA for 50 years.

Bill

 

[fiver]

I think they'll pay up just fine.
they just seen 11 years on the vehicle and figured I'd take their first offer in cash and move along.
I flat told the lady I talked to on Friday I don't want their money I want my car back the way it was when I parked it.
it still has the factory tires on it and I want the rest of the car back in that same condition.

 

[Rick]

That's normal operating procedure for insurance companies, come right out with a low ball check. Legally if you were to cash that hoping for more later your pretty much screwed, that's all you'll ever see.

 

[Intheshop]

11 year old rubber?

Dang man,I was gonna suggest a dry sump and lowering the engine to take advantage of the new triple clicker shocks but now?

Chit,I get maybe a weekend out of tyres on my bikes....it got so bad,I'd grab takeoff rubber off local dealers piles.Tourists come here with wore out centers....edges,untouched!!!

Mount/balance (we also have 3 axis wheel straightening machinery)....run'm at race pressure and toast/FRY them before cocktail hr.And this with fully tuned suspension systems.You're worrying me 5R.

 

[fiver]

well a couple more phone calls later and I think we got it straightened out.
i can't get it into the body shop until the 1st, but the check will go to them, and the bill will go to the insurance company.
they wanted to get me a rental car.
I told them this was my rental car and I'd rather walk home from the body shop rather than figure out how to drive 75 miles one way to a rental place twice in the same week.
besides that I'd be embarrassed to have a ford fiesta parked in the driveway.



I been down the 3-4 pairs of rear tires to every set of front tires road before.
but Z-rated tires ain't 20$ from the store, they are more like 350-400$ each now days.
as soft as they are it's pretty hard to get them to spin with the horsepower I got.
I can do a burnout if I really want to, but they just don't spin comin off a corner or the start line.
they will pick up every single little tiny rock on the road and throw it under the fender well which makes a highly annoying click clackclink noise.

 

[Intheshop]

Sandy Kosman....nuff said.

Not that we can't do it here...doh,takes your factory wheels and widens them.Your rr suspension needs to be a touch stiffer than the fr.The object,is...we're trying to get the rr to bring the fr down.

Think,turn entry....mid turn...exit.

It's exactly how we used to set up carbs,back in the day.Idle,midrange,wide open.How one "hands off",to the next is tuning.So,the fr end is responsible for turn entry....chassis balance takes care of mid turn...those Kosman wheels out back,take the exit chores.Simple,right?

 

[fiver]

it is until you take body flex into consideration.
it killed me to 'upgrade' that front suspension to the 'same' one my 1970 Chevelle had in it.
[which didn't cost near as much for the whole car]
the bonus is the car doesn't ride quite like a Sherman tank now.
the downside is I rim ride the back tires more in the corners, but I don't get quite the 'top heavy' [high COG]feeling I had before.
the shocks in the front is what set's that up when you come in hard under braking.
too stiff and you lose steering control.
too soft and your back end gets light.
it's insane if you really push things and don't have ABS [which I don't] and can't proportion the brake bias [which I can't] how much you pay attention to little things like that.
but it is where time comes from when you don't just run brute horsepower and heavy brakes.