Doored

[MShreve]

It finally happened...my first exterior blemish...and it's a BIG one. :(

My wife's friend doored the front driver's side fender HARD with a big ass door (early 90's Mecury Cougar I think). Left this huge dent on the edge of the wheel well and scraped the paint down to metal. (pissed)

Pics (pay no mind to the dirt, it's been raining):

http://home.comcast.net/~matt.shreve/Mazda/dent1.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~matt.shreve/Mazda/dent2.jpg

So we get the whole insurance thing going, but come to find out she had just let her insurance expire to "save some money" so Geico, naturally, denied the claim. So now I'm going to be $750 out of pocket just to get the fender fixed. My wife's "friend" in the mean time says she has no money and has stopped talking to us. WTF? This sucks.

[bazooka joe]

CRAP! that's a big door ding! sorry man!!

[SteveJ]

It finally happened...my first exterior blemish...and it's a BIG one. :(

My wife's friend doored the front driver's side fender HARD with a big ass door (early 90's Mecury Cougar I think). Left this huge dent on the edge of the wheel well and scraped the paint down to metal. (pissed)

Pics (pay no mind to the dirt, it's been raining):


So we get the whole insurance thing going, but come to find out she had just let her insurance expire to "save some money" so Geico, naturally, denied the claim. So now I'm going to be $750 out of pocket just to get the fender fixed. My wife's "friend" in the mean time says she has no money and has stopped talking to us. WTF? This sucks.

Well, small claims court might be an option. After all, a true friend would take responsibility for her actions.

[USAFVMI08]

How freaking hard did she hit your car? Looks like she opened her door with extreme prejudice.

[coyfish]

Yeah ive got a nasty door ding I got at college but this is just like a little kid just slammed the door open into your car. Thats a huge ding.

[TX Speed 6]

Ouch!!! So she pullled one of these ey (bolt)

That sucks man, she must have really been eager to get out the car!

[BoostedSpd6]

$750 to fix it..damn..well atleast its not on ur door it wouldve been more to fix it..take that b*itch to court man..

[Qwik6]

Son of a biscuit!

[jon619]

Is that $750 your deductible? I would make her sell something to pay you back and/or report her to the police or something. That's BS.

[coyfish]

Yeah not sure shes a "friend" . . . its not like you can hit someones car that hard and not notice !

[Qwik6]

I knew a guy who repaired dents on the side. Had a bunch of tools to work the metal back in shape. He was able to get huge dents out of a car and you wouldnt ever tell it was hit. See if you can find a shop that can do that. Probably about 75-100 bucks. Is the paint scraped off or was it a white car?

[BoostedSpd6]

I knew a guy who repaired dents on the side. Had a bunch of tools to work the metal back in shape. He was able to get huge dents out of a car and you wouldnt ever tell it was hit. See if you can find a shop that can do that. Probably about 75-100 bucks. Is the paint scraped off or was it a white car?


i think the original post said the paint was scraped off to bare metal..

[Super Shredder]

dont let that triflin ho get off on this! please! bitches think they can just laugh about it and tell themselves inside that they will get away with it. you know bitch got some diamond earrings her daddy gave her. if someone broke one of those, she wouldn't stop callin! take her to court, please.

[wannabe]

thats why i always carry UM/UI. covers it in case the other person doesn't have insurance (or enough)

[MazdaSpeeder]

ugh, that's horrible. I had a 97 tbird (same long, heavy doors) and can totally see how that happened. I second small claims court...if you can prove she did it, it would be worth it. Good luck.

[1quickturbosix]

I use to do paintless dent repair. that is fixable if the paint isnt cracked. You say the paint is scraped down to the metal? Depends on how perfect you want it. a good paintless dent repair man and some touch up could probably make it look pretty good.

[MShreve]

Thanks for the support.

The coloration at the top of the dent is gray paint off of her car. The coloration at the bottom of the dent is shiny bare metal.

I don't know what to do. I know that she really doesn't have the money (and she has 2 kids) so I can't bring myself to take her to court over it. On the other hand she didn't even offer to give us a dime, which pisses me off.

I talked to our insurance guy and the deductable to get this fixed would only be $100. However, if something else happens in the next year our premium would go up. Which makes me want to just take care of this out-of-pocket.

The $750 figure came from a body shop estimate. I'm assuming that's for a new fender, but don't know for sure. I should have asked, but I thought her insurance was going to take care of it at the time.

Do you really think this could be repaired? The metal looks streched to me plus the dent goes through the body line around the wheel well, which would be difficult to make it look right. I think bondo and paint would probably cost as much as a new fender.

[1quickturbosix]

Look up a paintless dent repair guy and have him look at it. I gaurantee if its someone who knows what they are doing... they will get that to look perfect. minus the missing paint. My guess would be between 150 - 300 depending how good they are. I would go 175 just by looking at the pictures. But things change once you get behind the metal and start pushing on it.

[1quickturbosix]

I had a big dent on my passenger door... i mean big. some a hole at work opened his door on a windy day. It ran vertical right through the body line that runs through the upper part of the door. I got it to look next to perfect. Theres a small dimple right on the line but its barely noticeable. Keep in mind I only did dent repair for a couple years. but get someone who has done it for 10 years and you wont ever notice it was there. Check out some videos on Youtube and youll see guys repairing stuff WAY worse then your fender.

[MShreve]

Thanks 1quickturbosix! I just called a few paintless dent repair places and am having 2 of them come over for an estimate today. I'll let you know how it goes.

[1quickturbosix]

Yea... do that... let me know what they were looking at for a price.

[MShreve]

1quickturbosix, you're the man!

It cost $125 and they were done in about 45 minutes. It's not perfect, but MUCH better than it was. I'd recommend Dent Away to anyone in the Portland Metro area. Awesome guys and very good at their work.

http://home.comcast.net/~matt.shreve/Mazda/dent-fix.jpg

He couldn't get the ripple out of the bottom edge without screwing up the wheel well lip, but the rest of it disappeared!

I'm headed down to the dealership tomorrow morning to pick up a bottle of touch-up. I'll post some more pics once I get it painted.

[1quickturbosix]

Did you get any other estimates or was this the first? It looks damn good for only 125... Compare to what a body shop would have wanted..

[1quickturbosix]

More pictures if possible... Id like to see it from a bit of a distance..... bout 4 or 5 feet away. Is this too much to ask..? haha.

[BoostedSpd6]

wow!!! nice job for $125, wont even be able to tell there was anything there with some touch up paint..

[MShreve]

Here's some more pics. That first macro shot doesn't do it any justice.

http://home.comcast.net/~matt.shreve/Mazda/dent-fix2.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~matt.shreve/Mazda/dent-fix3.jpg

[MShreve]

I called 3 different places. Dent Away was in the area and showed up like 30 minutes later. I talked to the guy for a minute and found out he was the owner and had been doing this for 11 years. Then when he said he could do it right then for $125 I said "go for it".

[speed6r]

I could live with that!

[MShreve]

It sure beats $750 for a new fender, that probably wouldn't have color matched exactly anyway.

[speed6r]

It sure beats $750 for a new fender, that probably wouldn't have color matched exactly anyway.

Werd

[1quickturbosix]

MAGIC!!! You got a good deal...

[ms6acton]

looks really good, and for 125 u cant go wrong

[MShreve]

This story has multiple good endings. My wife talked to her friend who agreed to pay the $125 + the cost of the touch-up paint!

(mj)

[Lil_vicious559]

This story has multiple good endings. My wife talked to her friend who agreed to pay the $125 + the cost of the touch-up paint!

(mj)

Wow dude, that's good news!! Beautiful story, lol