cahooa

Hi guys,

A wonderful uninsured motorist backed into my baby yesterday. Here is a picture of the carnage, thank god the rear quarter panel looks unscathed.

With my insurance I'm allowed to choose any body shop I want to perform the work. Does anyone have any recommendations? In my 15 years of driving I've never had to file an insurance claim or take my car to a body shop so any other pointers would be useful as well. Do you think I should have them fix the rear bumper to save the VIN tag or let them get a new one if they want? I also assume they will try to get a new trunk.

Thanks for any recommendations. I should point out I live in Olympia but I'm willing to drive up north for a quality shop.
-Alex

II JETFIRE II

Sorry about your car.
Sorry i cannot answer your question about your bumper, or know any body shops in Olympia.
Since i did not see anyone reply, i will give my 0.02 cents from my experience.

About a month ago, i put the funds together to finally fix the nasty vandalism that happened to the previous owner of my car. It is minor compared to yours, but i believe i got a good price. See here.
,





Below are the repairs missing one shot of the passenger side rear fender damage, that I could not find a picture of.
(Keep in mind it is raining today and there are some dirty water droplets on the bottom of the door)









I am not telling to you to come all the way up here to this shop i use, but i had an incident happen in Canada recently, and in the picture below, what you don't see is what Joseph K at NW Auto Body cleaned up for me today, (no charge) in the yellow circles. There were three areas of concern, and now there is just the dent. I had a quote yesterday from a "high end" recommended shop that included replacing the same rear light (except for a MY 2000 at about $350) when it doesn't require it at all in my case, for a scuff mark that is now gone. The lights operate and do not need replacing in my opinion. See below.



What advice i will offer is for you to get as many quotes from as many different places as you can find near you (including the smaller shops). Sometimes you get what you pay for, sometimes you don't, and sometimes you just pay. I will say that if i paid the quote from the "recommended" shop that gave me the quote as opposed to NW Auto Body, i would have paid nearly 4 times the price including purchasing a rear light I really didn't need. BTW, i am not using insurance for this.

But this is my story, you have to make your own. Good luck.

cahooa

Thanks for the reply. Your car looks like it made a great recovery! I will be using insurance for this so I am less concerned about the price but that is good advice regardless. I did got to three shops on Tuesday.

1st shop is a smaller shop. Said he could get me in immediately. He wanted to repaint the bumper cover and he said he would pull the dent on the trunk and fix it. He seemed to imply a lot of insurance shops wouldn't cut and buff the paint? This didn't make sense to me as I thought the car should look brand new in the damaged areas. He didn't do up a quote for me.

2nd shop was very popular and busy. He said he couldn't do any State Farm work for 2 months and recommended the 3rd shop, which I thought was kind of weird.

3rd shop was a 'Certified State Farm Shop', they said they would replace the trunk instead of repair it because he thought the top was pinched too much to pull the dent very well and would have to use too much filler. He also was going to repaint the bumper cover and not replace it. He also mentioned blending both rear quarter panels if necessary to match the trunk. The total price for his quote including all parts and labor was 3k if anyone is curious. I saw on his computer that it said they had all the OEM parts they wanted to replace at the big Honda dealership in Portland. The only bummer is that he said I couldn't get my car in until the end of June.

I honestly think I like the idea of having a brand new trunk instead of a repaired one. My car is an original vin matching car and so if the trunk was replaced I would loose my vin tag but I'm not sure I really care about that since I don't have plans on selling the car for a very long time. One thing all of the places say is that they have a lifetime warranty on the work, but honestly that doesn't make me feel that much better as I'd rather just have great work the first time and never have to take the car back there.

I think I'm going to go to the 3rd shop because they are going to replace the trunk with a new OEM one. I'll just drive around with a junky looking rear end for a month.

-Alex