Wife backed into truck

The wifey has been having a bad week. Capped it with an accidental backup of her Murano into my drivers door on our driveway.

Not super bad. But definitely a serious dent and paint damage. Window still rolls up and down smoothly. Some weather stripping cracked. Doesn't seem jammed or anything and still opens and closes fine. Some scrapes on the running board.

We want to get it fixed but I'm not super excited for her insurance to go up. We already have a house claim with USAA, I did a windshield claim a couple months ago, and our house is in a high fire risk area. I'm sure they're just looking for reasons to drop us now.

I'll shop around to some body shops next week for estimates. Hoping the repair might be less than the insurance increase would likely be, but that seems unlikely. We live in the San Francisco Bay Area where freaking everything is massively expensive.

Thoughts?

 

Might be cheaper to look for a new door at a salvage yard….that’s a pretty common color. Even if you can only get the door you can remove all electronics and trim

 

What @shawn474 said or find a good PDR guy. They should be able to get that out no problem

 

If you have the time, I would see which of the 2 options is cheaper

 

Second to PDR if you can find a good service provider. Probably cheaper than a body shop or door replacement.

 

If you go salvage check the door carefully. LOTS of different mgm shades out of Toyota I found out getting a repair. They took my truck out into the sun and compared like 20 different shades, I was really surprised.

 

How did they make it right? Did you just pick the closest match? Surely your insurance didn't paint the whole whole truck.

 

I was getting a gas door replaced by Toyota when they did this, it was at the dealer. They got one but it was only primed in the mail I guess and they had to do the finish coat. As far as I can tell they got it right.

I had a dent similar to that in the side of my truck that was repaired. The auto body shop did a little pop out a little bondo and they matched it perfectly as far as my eyes can tell. But they just did the area around the dent and blended it with the original paint.

 

A neighbor teen backed into driver's door of our babysitter's Lexus. Didn't look bad at all, however body shop pointed the door's reinforcement took a hit, so they replaced the door and painted the whole side. Because they have to replace the damaged safety anything by law. I think this is what you've got with your door as well. Teen's Mazda's rear corner was obliterated.

These modern Toyota's are made of tin foil unfortunately. When I PDR my 20 y.o. car I use a 3 lbs sledge hammer. Hot glue pullers don't work. Two layers of quality thick steel is no joke.

 

Are you handy? Get a hot glue PDR kit on Amazon and some polishing compound. You can get it looking 90+% better than it is now with very little efforts. Don't need to be perfect, just no white scratches and more or less even surface. In a year you won't be noticing the remaining small imperfections.

 

You're a better man than me. After having a day at work where all I seemed to get done was fixing others fuck ups, I came home to my wife putting garbage bags in the back of our Element to drive the 1/4 mile to the end of the driveway. I tried to talk her in to letting me take them in the bed of my company truck but was quickly shut down with, "You think I'm not capable of taking the garbage down?".
Off she goes with the hatch up and then she backs in to telephone pole crunching the hatch and buckling the roof. When she came back she asked what she should do. Google it was my response and our insurance company will not get involved.
She found a local body shop that did a very good job. I believe knowing it wasn't involving an insurance claim and cash payment kept the cost way down. $1,480 about 10 yrs ago. Since we carry $1,000 deductible this route made sense but she didn't learn anything from it. Still stubborn as a mule.

 

Wow. “Her insurance” and “google it”. Some pretty awesome husbands in here.

 

Yours is good. When mine does something like that, it is always me who is at fault.

 

Why'd you even park you're f***ing truck there!

 

More like: "I see no help from you, I'm so tired with doing everything, no wonder that happened"

 

When she backed her Sequoia into my red Tundra she said she saw everything and the parking sensors were beeping like mad, but she thought she still would be able to make it.

 

I can't even wrap my head around the mental gymnastics involved in these situations. Then again, I don't think any husband in the history of eternity can.

 

It might be totaled???????

 

Thats seems to happen more than it should.
Had my new Tacoma at the dealer getting the TRD Blower installed and when I went to pick it up it had two vertical gashes that were around four inches long on the tailgate.
And when I say Gashes I mean all the way through the metal!!!
They did replace and paint the tailgate but it meant another week without trying out the blower!!

 

Grounds for divorce right there

 

I agree with the PDR option or roll with the damage. Body shop will want to paint or blend into multiple panels.

 

If it gets too expensive you might still want to call USAA. House insurance is a different department than car insurance. And a windshield claim is different than a collision claim.

Years ago in DC I asked for an adjuster to come out for hail damage to my 2010 Tundra. After he looked at it I was only going to get $50 from USAA for the claim and have to find someone to fix it. I asked him to just cancel the claim cause of the low amount and he said he already sent it through. He told me he processes $100ks of claims a day sometimes.

Do you have accident forgiveness?

 

I fixed my bed dent without insurance, body shop guy said the premium hit over the years would be a lot more.

edit: small town shop, good rep, no reason to think he wouldn't be being truthful. Daughter works with me.

 

USAA does have forgiveness, but not for us. Accident forgiveness was outlawed in California under Prop 103 almost 40 years ago.

 

Ugh. The body shop wants $3800. That is based off of replacing the outer panel only; the door is fine. And then blending the paint on all three panels, plus replacing the weatherstrip which is $300 alone. Ifwe didn’t care about the paint blending, and we’re willing to risk the panel not looking exactly right, they said they could attempt to repair it rather than replace it, and not blend. That would be about $2500.

 

What does it even mean: "outer panel"? The door, all the metal, is one piece.

PDR kit from Amazon, do it yourself, leave $2300-2400 in the pocket.

 

Most automotive doors can be “reskinned”. The shell of the door that makes up the interior support and the outer skin. They are generally seemed together around the outer edge and can be split apart, and re-skinned with a new, not dented panel.

 

The body shop is quoting you a new door skin. This would involve removal of the door, door panel, glass, mirror, and most all of the hardware. They lay the door on a buck & proceed to remove the existing door skin which is held in by panel bond and the crimped edges. The door may then be reattached and the new door skin fit for panel gaps. They may screw in place to realign it for the panel bond when removed. The door is removed and panel bond applied, and the edges crimped. There are a lot of other steps for sealing, paint prep and painting/blending. You are paying a lot of labor for this vs just a good door from a salvage yard and paint supplies are not cheap. You may be able to find the weatherstrip online for under $100 and a small shop could replace. The problem I found in searching for body panels is finding the right color and one that isn't banged up and most of the yards don't even know what they have. I couldn't tell how bad from the pictures, but you could try to compound the white marks out by hand if they aren't past the clear coat. If that is good, then try to find a good PDR guy. He should be able to tell you if the door braces are bent. Sometimes if the metal is too stretched it will never be right.

 

car-part.com

search there

 

I knew there was a reason I escaped when I retired a couple years ago!!