At long last, almost a month to the day, my S is back home! I missed two autox's, and totally missed driving her daily - the rental car sucked!!

Some notes:
Crash took place 6/19 - long sweeping turn on my way to work; right front tire goes down, and off the road I went. Sideways. I was frankly surprised she didn't flip, and I missed hitting the interstate supports by only 10-15 feet, so I guess I should consider myself lucky as no one else was involved and I didn't hit the concrete! The nose of the car took all the damage, messing up the bumper, the plastic underside (valance?) that keeps stuff from flying up into the engine bay, the radiator, the support the radiator sits on and the condensor.
As I was within about 1/4 mile of work, and she was running, I limped in to the office and started doing research on where to take my car to get fixed. ProCare collision in Flower Mound was the only place that no one badmouthed, and I arranged for her to be towed (on a flatbed) there. Contacted my insurance, and they sent a claims person out Monday morning, he wrote the first check, and said he'd come back to do the suplimental for the damage he couldn't see underneath. 10 days later, he went back. I can probably say that was the worst part of the whole deal. I called, ProCare called, and finally he goes back out there.

My insurance agent sets me up with Enterprise for a rental car, and I have to hand it to Enterprise, great customer service and they were very polite and helpful throughout. On the bad side, my insurance policy only paid out $20 a day for the rental car, which put me in a Dodge Neon. What a piece of sheeeit. I almost crashed 3-4 times in the first few days either because the brakes didn't stop like I thought, or that the car didn't turn like I thought it would. I will never, ever in my life rent another Neon, period. The really really frightening thing to me about the Neon is that I see these kids driving their Neon like bats out of hell, and now that I know the thing can't stop or steer it just kinda freaks me out.

Car was being aligned this past Saturday, although I was supposed to have it already by that Friday, causing me to miss the autox. On the positive side, I did get to sit in my car when they were doing the work, and I must say I'm really enjoying the new specs as I had it aligned to UK specs. Nice. A little bit of panic, as I am running Yoko AVS ES100s and needed a new right front tire - a buddy of mine was going to put them on his Suby WRX, and didn't, as there was apparently a nationwide backorder on them. Luckily, ProCare was able to find one in our size and it wasn't a big deal at all.

Picked my baby up Tuesday late afternoon, and ProCare had honored my wish to turn the car over to me dirty - as I wanted to clean her myself, and take advantage of the cleaning time to give the car a thorough once over. They blended the paint pretty damn well, even better than Honda did on the bumper to hood, I was impressed. It's hard for me to tell overall about the overall paint quality as I can't wax her for another 25 days or so - and I had several layers of Klasse and the new Eagle 1 Nanowax on her. I'm sure it'll be fine though.

I'm very very very happy to have my baby back in the garage, let me tell you!

 

Congrats on getting your baby back in good shape!

 

Sounds like they took good car of you. Thanks for the write up! Hope to see you at the next race!

Kevin

 

thanks, guys.