Hail Damage

LOL, look at my sig and the dates I got those high mileages. They were all AFTER the hail damage in May. I'm surprised nobody mentioned it before now.

Unfortunately, it looks like crap as it is.

 

Uuuggg! The body shop called and said they have several areas that the PDR method is not working so they will need to do more body work. They contacted the insurance company guy Monday to OK the extra $ and he can't get there until Friday afternoon.

CRAP!! I'll be lucky to see this car before Thanksgiving!

Looks like 1 month in the shop is going to be fairly accurate. About 10 days of that is due to waiting on the insurance guy to come by and approve charges. They're still swamped.

I have a new found appreciation for people that have gone through weather disasters and the months of crap they have to go through after.

 

Very true. You make an excellent point.

My real frustration is knowing it just stat there for 10 days waiting for some guy to come by and OK the charges. I don't mind the time spent doing the work. I'm sure the body shops get frustrated with that as well. They can't rush the insurance companies and the customer get angry with them so they get caught in the middle.

 

Almost 6 weeks now and still no car . . . . I'm hopeful for early next week.

 

I just now got my Prius back. It took almost 7 weeks to finish (Oct 25 - Dec 15th). All the repair work looks good. It was cleaner when I took it in but I can fix that pretty quickly. All the little nooks and crannies are full of fine powdery talc like dust from the body shop so I will do a complete head to toe detail on the inside. I have to wait for the paint to cure before I can do more than washing the exterior.

They basically gutted the interior in order to access all the inside paint surfaces to do PDR plus the whole roof was cut off and replaced so it sat open and uncovered in the body shop gathering dust.

Oh well it's over and now I have to learn how to drive all over again. I've been driving my wife's 3.5L Altima hot rod for 7 weeks.

PS, the battery was just fine even after sitting for 7 weeks. It did not have to be jumped.

 

LOL, thanks. I was able to test that quite well last year. We had 3 ice storms to play with. I do just fine on the ice. It's all the other idiots on the road that's the problem. You know, sort of like all your moose and far east aurora tourists.

These new fangled cars with their front wheel drive, ABS, and ASC just woul't let a guy have fun anymore.

Dang, I'm going to have to buy some gasoline. I haven't bought gas since Oct 20th!

 

Don't you just hate that. Sometimes you just need to be out of control. Seriously, every year when we get the first slick stuff, I'd go find a big parking lot with no obstacles and make the vehicle slide around just to get used to the feel in case it should happen when I didn't want it to. The Prius makes that hard to do.

THANK YOU! That's exactly what I've been wanting to do. The paint is only a couple of days old on 95% of the horizontal surfaces. We've got snow coming in Friday so I'll get after it today. Thank you.

 

PS, the total cost was $6,095.97. The original insurance estimate that they paid me direct for was $4,077.18. That number was assuming the ability to do 100% paintless dent repair (PDR) which they could not. It was all labor except for ~$1,000 in parts/paint. Parts were a new front hood and windshield.

I purposely went in search of rough roads and so far there are no rattles, or loose screws rolling around in body panels. Today I'm taking the water hose to it to look for leaks.

It looks like the only thing I lost was radio presets. My high gas mpg record and all current tank stats remained intact.

So far so good. I'm glad it's finally over.

 

When I took it in I never dreamed it would take until mid-December to get it back. I delayed taking it in so the backlog would go down so I could get it back quicker. That logic was bad but then I did have a lot of damage to fix.

I'll keep it clean weekly with mild soap (Meguir's purple Deep Crystal Car Wash) and then I'll reapply. They use salt on our roads so I never let it stay dirty. It's tough to keep clean with melt water spray, etc.

 

We're having our usual weather roller coaster. Monday's high was a warm 77° and Tuesday's high was only 45°. Today it's 37° with drizzle and tomorrow is forecast warm and sunny. One year ago today, we got 14" of snow in under 8 hours. If you don't like our weather just wait a few minutes.

Have a great Christmas!

 

No that's not fun and it's dark to boot. I've never seen the northern lights and would love to some day. Sadly the wintertime is the best time to see them so that's slowed me down a bit. The lower 48 winters are a bit different than yours. My wife says anything below 70°F is freezing.