Old and Helpless

[yogi]

I'm not all that well versed on Illinois traffic laws, and a lot less knowledgeable about what goes on down here in Missouri. Our front fenders kissed each other which didn't make it obvious who was at fault simply by looking at the damage. That's all the police had to go by when they arrived because we both moved our cars out of the highway traffic before the police arrived. No ticket was issued and the accident report was kind of skimpy. It was just the statement from the two drivers scribbled on a standard crash report form that was half a sheet of paper in size. The kid who hit me didn't have a valid insurance card in the car, but that was ok because an old card was all the police needed to assume he was covered. Turns out there was no problem. The card simply didn't get put in the glove compartment.

Also in Illinois, I found out the hard way that I need to report an accident to the state if it involved more than a certain dollar amount. Nobody told me that until I got a letter from the state wanting me to surrender my license plates for not reporting the accident. Well, that got taken care of without a need to give up the plates, but it just added to the complexity of documentation. Do you know if some government body in the state of Missouri wants me to file a report with them? I'm guessing not because nobody mentioned it. Anyway, Friday will be the day I get an estimate for repairs. Hope they still have parts for old Saturns laying around.

[Kellemora]

In MO, if you are in an accident, your insurance company obtains a copy of the police report and files with the state if necessary. At least 15 years ago when I lived there. Don't know what they do now, but I doubt it changed.
If one of the drivers was not insured, then it is mandatory you report the accident to the state. But then the police usually take care of reporting uninsured motorists involved in an accident.
All I know for sure is I've never had to report an accident to the state, if same was required, my insurance company did it and sent me a copy of the report which was sent to the state. I think the damage was over 2 grand though on that one.

[yogi]

I'm hoping you are correct and I can't believe it would be otherwise. Somebody would have told me by now, I assume, if I had to do any extra paperwork. I'll be verifying it all before this claim is settled anyway. We are scheduled to get an estimate for our car repair tomorrow. Hopefully I won't have to go car shopping after that. I have no idea what I would buy short of that Bentley which only can be purchased if I win the lotto. LOL

[Kellemora]

Even if I could afford to buy a new fancy car, I couldn't afford the insurance or upkeep on it.

Look at how much it costs to have an alternator replaced on a Mercedes compared to a Ford or Chevy, hi hi.

[yogi]

If I could afford to buy a Bentley I would not be concerned about the upkeep and maintenance. Bentley owners are in a class of their own where the concept of money is vague and seldom pondered. They just acquire what they want and need. What I would be concerned about more than the insurance is what the state of Missouri would want from me in terms of personal property tax. A stripped down version of the Bentley I'm looking at starts at just over $300k. The taxes on that kind of property are unfathomable.

Anyway, I don't realistically see a Bentley in my future, but I do see the old Saturn getting repaired. The estimator this morning said it needs a fender, bumper, and headlight, all of which would not be difficult to obtain if GM workers were not on strike. I told him I don't care if they get their parts from the junk yard as long as they painted it up to look pretty. He then said the earliest date to start repairs would be October 27th. However, they do have other shops in the state of Missouri and if one of them can do it significantly sooner they would be glad to tow the car back and forth at no additional cost. I was amazed that they would offer that kind of service given that they are so darned busy they don't need to be concerned about customer retention. Fortunately the car is very drivable and merely looks ugly where it was wrinkled.

[Kellemora]

When I had that minor fender bender in my late wife's car. The shop wanted 250 dollars for a new fender.
I ran downtown to the company that makes the fenders they send out to shops.
They ran me one off for only $35.00, it was coated with black primer is all.
I ended up doing the fender myself since they just bolted on.
Only hit a couple of snags I could handle with a reciprocating saw, hi hi
The shop wanted like 120 bucks to paint the fender after I masked it off.
Bought a can of OEM white paint and used my own paint sprayer and did it myself.
I don't remember what the small pint can of paint cost, but it was under 15 bucks I'm sure.
Looked the same as the rest of the car, and didn't run, fade, or change color before I traded that car in.

I would have had some backyard mechanics fix my Blazer that I totaled, but after checking how much just the computer itself was used from a junkyard, I said no way.
I bought a used Blazer, same year and style, exactly like my car for 1600 bucks, the only difference was the interior was black instead of gray. Has all the same amenities mine had. I've had it now over a year and it runs great. So I've already got my moneys worth out of it.

[yogi]

I don't know how many tens of thousands of dollars I've sent to the insurance company for premiums, but I am absolutely positive it's more than what they will shell out to repair my car. Even if I had the shop and the equipment, I'd not do the job myself since I've already paid somebody else to do it and more. I don't understand the long lead time for the repairs. Shops up north are pretty damned busy as well, but it would not take more than a couple weeks to get things back in order again. All I can think of is there must be a shortage of body shop workers and they can only do so many cars at a time. The building is huge and I"m certain they can work on several autos simultaneously. Plus, there is no shortage of body shops in our town. So it must be skilled labor that is is short supply.

[Kellemora]

I used a Dealer's body shop once and they had my car for over three weeks, just to fix a minor dent in the passenger door.
They said they had to remove the skin and put it back on again. No damage to the door framework.
And instead of a dent, now you could see a slight bulge, it was minor but in the right sunlight it showed up.
I thought this odd, since another time when I had a worse dent in a door from a huge roller cart at a hardware store getting loose and running across the parking lot, all they did was pop the dent out, then made a small indent where they used their metal tools and body puttied that up. Had it back in three days. Couldn't tell it was ever damaged.

There is a huge body shop near us, very expensive, and so busy they tell you up front, at least two months maybe longer.
But, this company gives you a loaner car to use for free, or paid in part by your insurance company. So it is not like you are without wheels all that time.

[yogi]

I'm pretty sure the body shop I chose would also rent me a loaner. They were dismayed to inform me that I did not have insurance to cover the cost of a rental vehicle, and I assured them that the reason I don't have the coverage is because I don't need it. We have two cars. LOL

I've not had to visit a body shop or take care of a collision claim in dozens of years. Things could have changed to account for the huge backlog. Maybe back in Chicago the wait is just as long now. Can't say for sure.

While the damage to my car would not fall into this category, mom also liked Saturn cars. The side panels on the doors of her cars were not metal. Saturn claimed that to be a feature because many dents could simply be popped out without a visit to a body shop. Mom tested that theory out two or three times, and never had to go to a shop. A quarter panel or fender would be a different story, but self healing doors were an innovation I really liked.

[Kellemora]

The Bricklin I had for a short time was almost all a resilient plastic.

Unless the metal stretches, you can often pull dents out of metal also, and if you can get to both sides of a larger dent you can shrink the metal back down, and/or spoon it back into shape. All kinds of little tricks are used in body shops.

When I did work on my old '46 Ford, we didn't have body putty, we used lead, and talk about a pain to work with.
It did have it's benefits though, you could rework it or add more to it easier than with body putty.
I know we used over 20 lbs of lead after removing all the chrome to fill in the dents we made where the mounting holes were. It was fun though. I had a car to work on, hi hi.

[yogi]

I'm not sure Saturn invented the plastic body concept but they did a great job of implementing it. The dents mom encountered popped out easily, but the most amazing part was the paint. It didn't crack or flake off as I expected. Perhaps the plastic itself was colored and there was no paint over it. I really don't know. It was just impressive to see how it worked out.

I never did any body work on a car but I can see how liquid lead would be an advantage over Bondo. I suppose there are sealers and primers, but it seems as if it might be difficult to paint over something like lead.

[Kellemora]

Honestly, painting over lead was easier than over Bondo which is a plastic resin. Not much sticks to plastics very well, or used to not.

Most of what we used for body work back in the day would be outlawed today. Lead for one, hi hi, but also the zinc rich primer that was used over the lead and sanded. Lead in the air, zinc in the air, plus whatever was in the paint besides that, probably more lead, hi hi.
Also, we did not have the fancy acrylic paints like they have today, we had to use slow drying oil based ENAMEL and use heat lamps to bake it on. If you could do a job without a RUN somewhere, you were a pro, hi hi. Even if you didn't get a run, sometimes the paint would slowly SAG overnight.
Everything they came out with was an improvement since then!
Heck, now you have coatings like we used to use on model airplanes, sheets of plastic you heat shrink onto a car.
What next? LCD Display plastic sheeting that changes colors!

[yogi]

Our first car was a 1949 Chevy Deluxe. We obtained it around 1960 from my uncle who bought it new. It never saw a garage and the paint was fading in a few places, but it ran great; choke, throttle, and column shift et al. My dad and my uncle, his brother, decided one day that the car needed to be repainted, but the $49.95 Earl Sheib wanted back then was way too expensive. After some considerable deliberation, and several bottles of beer later, the two of them went to the hardware store and bought some epoxy based paint; baby blue and battleship grey. They painted the car and from a distance it looked pretty spiffy. However, when you got closer the brush marks were visible in many places. I don't think that car ever got rusty either. Doubt it was due to the paint, but they made cars a lot different in those days.

[Kellemora]

Oh My. My cousin did the same thing with a car he had. Painted it with a brush using plain old outdoor wall enamel.
They guy he sold it too, covered the entire car with paint stripper and got it down to the original cars paint, which for some reason the paint stripper didn't seem to bother much.
You are going to love this.
He bought cans of aluminum spray paint and painted the entire car with this silver first.
Then, and who would have ever thunk it.
There was this plastic material you could buy to form like flower petals out of wire and dip into the plastic.
The plastic was of course translucent, and came in red green yellow blue, etc. all normal colors.
Being a runny liquid, about the consistency of Honey, he parked the car in the middle of a field and simply poured this stuff over the top of the car and hood, etc. After masking off the windows and trim. Plus sticking some foam down in the grooves around the hood, trunk and tops of the doors, didn't put anything on the edges of the doors.
Out in the hot sun the stuff dried fairly quickly so he didn't get the super light top and dark sides he though he would get, but the shade of red did vary a little lighter at the top and darker at the bottom.
It looked GREAT, for about six months, then began fading to an orangish pink, then a coral pink, then to pink, and finally clear on the top to pink on the bottom.
He finally spray painted the thing with maroon automotive primer and sold it.
I think he added some wrinkle black paint on the roof to cover flaking and make it look like those fake ragtops, hi hi.

[yogi]

The plastic coating was quite an innovative idea. Too bad it faded the way it did. I think in today's world there are polyvinyl coatings that are clear and durable enough to last longer than six months. However, I don't know if that would be cheaper than paying a professional to paint it the right way.

[Kellemora]

Back then, we did have things like candy apple, but it took multiple applications. You had a special sparkly primer, then the expensive candy apple lacquer over that, followed by at least four coats of clear lacquer over it all. Sometimes while the candy apple coat was wet, they would add fine metal flake lightly, which made bumps in the clear lacquer so it would then take like six coats or waiting for it to dry and sanding down the whole car then adding two more coats. A big job really to do back then. A paint job like that had to be built up in layers.

As an aside, most of our delivery trucks were a simple green enamel paint, and if you recall, unless you kept them waxed, the paint would chalk and turn dull.
My dad used to pay to have each truck Simonized by this one place, and that type of wax held up for about a year before it needed done again.
Then after lacquers became durable, instead of having the trucks Simonized, or buying them with factory lacquer paint, we took each truck up to the high school which had an automotive paint shop class, and they did a super great job for us. Which was really only lightly sanding the enamel then spraying two coats of clear over it. Never had any peal or flake in all the years we kept our trucks for. Can't say that about factory lacquer coatings.

My uncle bought an old coral colored Studebaker that looked almost white from the chalk.
He left it in a garage on the farm for me to work on buffing it out.
That turned out to be more work than I expected it to be. So I tried something.
I bought a can of chrome cleaner for bumpers and used that. It worked great, and fast too.
Not much harder than waxing a car really. Then I used a wax with jewelers rouge in it on the car.
It looked like it just rolled off the showroom floor.
After seeing it, and picking up his lower jaw off the floor, he paid me three times what we agreed upon.
After I found out what he was able to sell it for, he should have given me much more, hi hi.

[yogi]

I have Simonized a few cars in my day; and only a few. My arm is beginning to hurt just thinking about it. I've polished and waxed many times, but there is something special about Simonize. I also recall the powdery finish on those older cars, which is why they needed to be simonized in the first place. I think the durability of the paint depended a lot on where the car was kept. Those which were garage kept and did not have to endure the harsh Chicago winters, especially the road salt, maintained their color and finish quite a while. Every time I sold a car I had it detailed. Sometimes that would cost me quite a bit, but I always got it back and more because the car looked so nice.

[Kellemora]

I was really surprised when I finally found a '97 Blazer exactly like the one I had bought new and wrecked.
Someone put a lot of work into that car. New paint job, new decals on the outside, recolored the inside, probably to hide salt damage, hi hi. I only paid $1,600.00 for it, and I've now had it two years, and the only thing I had replaced on it was the metal brake lines. Well, also the back parking brakes at the same time. The bill was only like 475 bucks.
I was worried about the engine at first, because it has over 200k miles on it. But it runs better than the one I had replaced in mine, so I'm happy as a lark with it. It's almost like getting my baby back, but not quite.

I didn't exactly have a car detailed, but did take my wife's '93 Jimmy to a clean-up shop right after I had the new AC system installed. It looked almost brand new inside when they got done cleaning it. That cost like 600 bucks, because they replaced a few parts they were able to get, like the AC plastic vents in the dashboard and arm rests on the front doors, etc. Little things that added up fast, hi hi.

[yogi]

I have electric windows in the Saturn with a 4-button control panel by the dirver's left hand on the door. One of those four buttons lost its spring and is about to fall apart completely. Being the electronic technician I am, I realize it's simple to fix. Just replace the switch. That is, if you can get just the switch. I've not tried to fix this yet but I know from past experience that they don't sell piece parts for a car 11 years old. I can buy an entire panel, or might even have to buy a whole new door in order to get that switch fixed.

I had the an old Plymouth detailed before I sold it. I think it was about $100 or a tad more to have it done. The next car was an Audi. Kept that until 100,000 miles rolled up on the odometer and looked into having it detailed. The price for the Audi was $350. Decided against detailing. The odd thing about that Audi was it needed a new clutch. It was obvious. It slipped when starting out in 1st gear. Be that as it may, a fellow I worked with wanted to buy it for the Blue Book value. I didn't have to think about it very long.

[Kellemora]

I worked on the door switches in the wife's old '93 Blazer a few times. A little super glue and a spring from a ball point pen fixed the two that went down and wouldn't come up again.
Had a door lock that wouldn't lock too on the Blazer I bought. You could hear the solenoid click and the knob pop down, but the door was not locked. But if you lifted up on the knob and tilted it slightly you could lock it by pushing down that way.
This was a really simple fix, once I got the door panel open near the lock. The wire to open and close the door had a U shaped bend in it, and the solenoid was near the bottom of the door. It worked just fine, but the tab the U shape was supposed to hit was bent back, and when the solenoid pulled on the wire, it shifted out away from the tab. But if you lifted and pushed down manually on the knob, the wire bent the opposite way and would hit the tab. It did not good trying to bend the wire a little closer because the solenoid still pulled it outward as it pulled down and pushed up too for that matter.
All it took to fix it was adding U shaped piece of wire from the door frame around the wire and back to the door frame. The holes were already there, so I think a clip must have been there at one time that did just that. I didn't open up the other door to see, since my loop of wire fixed it.

Speaking of plastic parts that go bad that you can no longer get anymore. I remember from my plastic forming days when I had to have some prototypes made how simple it was to heat and bend plexiglass.
On some old cars I've owned, I did just this to fix things like heater boxes or the molded flat tube that came from them to feed something else that someone broke by putting their feet up on them and using them as a foot rest.