New build! E90 M3
-
As @Rekpointsaid, I have yet to see a car I liked these on. But they look so good on your car. I am very excited to see this in person!
-
Well the car has been out of commission for a couple weeks now. I had just picked my son up from school and was heading to the grocery store when I was side swiped by a box truck. I was in the left lane when he came flying past me and came from the right lane to the left and his rear bumper caught my car. Nobody was injured but there was a bit of cosmetic damage done to the car. The front right fender exploded, the passenger mirror was destroyed, tire popped and the wheel had a small dent. His lane change was aggressive enough that I thought the guy hit me on purpose. We pulled over and I asked him if he was OK and he Immediately offered to write me a check for $2000 because based on his assessment that's about how much the damage cost. I was very calm as we waited for the police to show up. The guy kept making small talk and telling me how perfect his driving record was and that he'd prefer to handle this outside of the insurance companies. At some point after multiple ways of asking to exchange insurance info I straight up asked if he had insurance and I got many excuses about not being able to remember, lost his card, his wife handles it, etc. He did give me a business card and that's when I learned he owned the box truck and a small landscaping company.
The police showed up and took statements while I waited for my wife to show up with a spare wheel and tire for me. I was able to swap out the wheel and drive it home without issue. I reported the incident to my insurance company and started talking to them the next day. They made a hard push to have the car towed to one of their "authorized" repair facilities near me and I was adamant I would use my own repair facility. First I called Merton Auto Body where a friend of mine works and they were a month out. Next I called Radix Collision and Restoration where my wife's uncle works. I told the guy who I was related to and he acted like he knew but said it'd be a month out. A little bit later I get a call and hear "Hey, who are you related to here?" I said Bob was my wife's uncle and told him I'd met him a couple times from stopping in there and a light bulb came on! He asked if I could get it in the next day, a Friday, so they could look at it right away Monday. I said yes and dropped it off the next day.
They looked at it last Monday, quoted and ordered parts the same day while the adjuster showed up Wednesday and green lit all the work. Every replacement part is an OEM BMW part. The benefit of using a high quality body shop! They'll advocate for you and your car. These guys are car people. They've got a trophy case in their waiting room filled with awards from SVRA, the Brian Redman Challenge, etc. There's vintage engines all over the place, vintage bodies on shelves and more! My wife's uncle is doing all of the work except for the paint where they have a paint specific guy. The good news is my car is going to come back in better condition than when it went in! They're fixing ALL of the rock chips in the front bumper and hood for me!
The bad news. As many of you may have guessed by now, SURPISE! The guy doesn't have insurance. I'm on the hook for the deductible unless they can get money out of him. They'll go after him for 3 years and after that it exceeds the statute of limitations for the incident. I might see my $500 some day but I'm not terribly hopeful. My insurance company broke that news to me last Monday. She said the guy tried to blame ME! He said a pothole caused my fender to explode and I sped up to hit him. Thankfully I provided the number of a friendly witness that provided a statement to my insurance company that corroborated what I had said so I was found 0% at fault.
I'm hoping to have the car back this Wednesday but I know BMW was supposed to have parts there by last Thursday and on Friday I got a text with pictures of the progress and them letting me know the parts still hadn't shown up. I'm lucky enough to have my truck so I'm not in dire need but I'd really like a few more drives in before the end of the year.
-
Glad everyone’s alright Pat.
every single person that has hit Brooke has not had insurance. Such a pain in the ass
-
Glad everyone’s alright Pat.
every single person that has hit Brooke has not had insurance. Such a pain in the ass
Thanks man! I kept hoping that he was just an idiot and really didn't know who his insurer was but he's just a regular idiot, not a forgetful idiot.
-
Thanks man! I kept hoping that he was just an idiot and really didn't know who his insurer was but he's just a regular idiot, not a forgetful idiot.
I’m sure he was more than ready to cut you a check that would bounce
-
I’m sure he was more than ready to cut you a check that would bounce
I tried to be so nice about it when he was standing there just throwing numbers at me about what he thinks the parts cost on my car. Without sounding like the pompous douchebag BMW owner I am I was trying to gently explain that this is an M3 and parts are not cheap. I told him the mirror alone was probably around $1000 and he scoffed at that. Said there's no way and you can get them on ebay for less. He suggested the fender could come pre-painted for like $200. I tried to explain how paint matching and blending works and how that'd never look right. It was all moot.
-
What sucks is he would probably pay less than $2k a year for commercial insurance on that shitty old box van
Glad it's getting fixed up right though, family connections work when they remember you. 
In all fairness her uncle remembered me but the guy at the front desk, who I had met multiple times, did not remember me lol
-
I'm still waiting for the mirror and fender liner to show up. BMW had an ETA of last Thursday but they still haven't arrived. In the meantime why not stock pile parts to install! I'm extremely excited for these ST XTA+3 coilovers. They are 3 way adjustable, height adjustable and come with camber plates. They're adjustable rebound and high and low speed compression. The benefit of this level of adjustability is a more dynamic ride that will lead to higher comfort and better handling. These are made by KW. These are not outsourced to one of the the Taiwanese factories other coilovers are made at. There are slight differences in the finish on these and the warranty compared to KW but the important stuff is high quality.
-
It sucks that he didn't have insurance, but at least he stopped so you got his info. Most these days wouldn't.
If I was you I'd go buy some lottery tickets, hoping your luck is still holding out.
From reading your account of the accident. I would have figured the "M" was toast, and you had his bumper in the side from the rear door handle up to the roundel on the hood. You got lucky.
I had a tangle with box truck about 30 years ago. Hit me in the same corner, but hard enough to send me spinning like a pinball, bouncing of 2 other cars and finally t-boned by a van. Wound up in a ditch with the van teetering on the edge ready to roll over on top of us any second. My Mustang didn't have a straight panel left and the passenger seat was ~9" wide. I'm lucky to be alive.
Looks like most of the damage was simple bolt on stuff, and with a good paint match it will look better then new.
Good to see everyone was OK, M is on it's way to healing, and the upgrades continue.
-
She's finally home! Sorry for the shitty pictures I was just too excited to take any decent ones. I asked them to leave my lip off so I can line that up how I want it so I still need to do that. I could not say enough good things about the work Radix did! I can't tell there was any work done other than there's no more rock chips on the front end!
I took the kids for a rip on the way back home and they just giggled and giggled when I'd run through some gears with the windows open! It feels so good to be back in this car.
Now to get my coilovers installed!
-
-
The coilover install had a slight hiccup preventing me from finishing it a couple weeks ago but it was unrelated to the coilovers themselves. My passenger rear lower shock bolt snapped off which meant I needed to pull the arm to try cut out the shock and remove the bolt. Spoiler alert, I could not get the bolt out. It's an aluminum CA and a steel bolt that I'm guessing is stainless or has some coating to prevent galvanic corrosion. I tried soaking it in PB, heat, heat plus wax, drilling, using an extractor kit and swearing at it with no luck. I ended up ordering another control arm from ebay before I left for SEMA and got it all put together this weekend.
The coilovers are ST XTA +3. At a high level these are KW V3 dampers with a different coating. They are a 3 way adjustable (Rebound, High/Low speed compression) with height adjustable front/rear and camber plates up front. The shorter sway bar links were included. The instructions are my biggest complaint because they mix German and English and there's not really any organization. It's not like one page is in German then the next is the same thing in English. Some have both languages, some are only in German and some have the pages mirrored. Thankfully the part where they tell you how to set up the rebound and compression is English!
I have it set to their recommended settings and the ride height a little lower than the H&R springs. The ride quality is amazing! It's more comfortable than stock while giving me more confidence in corners, reduced push from the front end and it's far more settled if I hit a bump mid corner. I need to get the car over to Big Bear for corner balance and alignment then the handling will be perfect!
-
The team at work shot some content on my car and I'm really excited about it! It's the first time I've seen video rollers of my car and I LOVE IT!
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CWbN5lsgi52/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
-
I can tell how excited you are
Hello! It looks like you're interested in this conversation, but you don't have an account yet.
Getting fed up of having to scroll through the same posts each visit? When you register for an account, you'll always come back to exactly where you were before, and choose to be notified of new replies (either via email, or push notification). You'll also be able to save bookmarks and upvote posts to show your appreciation to other community members.
With your input, this post could be even better 💗
Register Login