Body Restoration - Page 5
Amazing but True! Another parked car accident!
This page last updated August 12, 2007.
August 4, 2007
Not even one month after getting the car out of the shop from my 800-man-hours-and-counting restoration project, the car was hit again. This is now the SEVENTH time in the last four years that someone has hit this car while it was parked on the street. And again, the damage was pretty minimal -- so much so that the driver that did it probably didn't even realize that any damage was done.
In a special twist of sad irony, this time I was hit by my own limousine driver. After spending 10 hours in an airport earlier that day trying to get home from a business trip, I finally arrived back in NJ at a little after midnight on Saturday morning. My company hires a car service for us, so late night arrivals should be just a little more tolerable. The driver was apparently fairly new -- he confided to me that "this was only the second time that he's ever driven on the Garden State Parkway" (!) -- but he was courteous and professional, and we had a nice conversation while I guided him back to my home. When we arrived in my neighborhood, I suggested that he pull into my landlord's driveway to let me off, and then he could back out and proceed back in the direction that we came from.
But when he pulled out, he managed to back up just a half-inch too far! My freshly-restored sports car was parked across the street, and he managed to just barely tap the front bumper. He apparently didn't even realize that I was watching all of this. I could see that he hesitated a few seconds, looking around for the source of the metal-on-metal scraping noise that he just heard. And he probably looked over his shoulder at my car and thought that he didn't do any damage, so he just drove off. I probably would have done the same.
From his vantage point, there was no damage to be seen. I even looked at it myself after he left, and couldn't see any damage from the street. Keep in mind that it was 1:30 in the morning, and it was pretty dark out. It wasn't until the next day that I actually saw what had happened. But even in the daylight, it's tough to spot any hint of a problem from a vantage point at the side of the car.
In the photo above, I could see from across the street that the point where the bumper cover meets the left fender looks just a little bit different. The shadow above the bumper cover, on the side of the fender, is just not as pronounced as it should be. Consider that I've been working on this car for a few years now, and I know pretty much every contour of the sheet metal by now. As I got closer, I could see that the bumper cover was pushed in, and the paint on the fender was cracked. The sheet metal itself apparently took a very minor impact. The point where the fender meets the header panel -- in front of the headlight, and just above the bumper -- was actually bent up just a little, but I was able to push it back down to a correct shape with the palm of my hand prior to taking the picture below.
But the real damage is visible from the front of the car. The entire bumper has been pushed to the right of the car by about a half-inch.
I know exactly what it's going to take to fix this damage. The bumper is held on by two "shock absorber" support posts, and they were probably bent by the impact. They might be able to be fixed with a couple of good shots with a sledge-hammer, or they might have to be replaced. Fortunately. they're bolt-on parts.
But the crack in the paint on the fender will take some more time. That crack will actually have to be sanded down, treated with metal conditioner to prevent rust, primed, wet sanded, sealed, wet sanded, and then painted. The paint and clear coat will have to be feathered in to match the rest of the fender. I have little doubt that this is going to take four to six hours of somebody's labor. I'd do it myself, but my time isn't free.
The limo company is working with me, but we haven't settled on how to handle this. We'll see how that goes....
