most likely totaled

[newshofan]

well as the title states my sho is most likely totaled a 97 volvo pulled out in front of me on a small highway. i t-boned them at 45. they are at fault. im waiting on insurance todo their thing. finaly got a rental from them. it happened on monday. so im decided if i should take less money and part the car or what. and i may be looking for another sho. i have a few scoped out. but any suggestions would be great

 

[SHOCH]

hard to say without pics but IMHO a front end hit at 45 is scrap. Maybe if you get it super cheap and you liked the interior it would be worth it, if you found another one.

 

[sperold]

It will be wrote off.
They will give you a value, and deduct your "deductible" and if you want the car, the salvage value they assign.
The money for the rental and storage has nothing to do with your claim and has no bearing on whether the car is wrote off.
You have to see what the salvage value is before you decide if you want it. It shouldn't be too high.
If they brand it as unfixable, it will only be a parts car. If they don't, they usually want an inspection before they will re - insure.

 

[newshofan]

well ii hope i get what i atleast put into it. and i have to get some money for medical and work absence. but i mean. damn i might just be without a car. the longer i put them off the longer i get the rental but its a crappy chevy hhr. so i cant wait to get out of the thing.

 

[newshofan]

ok these are a few pics of the car i hope i got them on here right.

 

[Jh8990]

ok these are a few pics of the car i hope i got them on here right.

sucks bro

but look at it this way. it was a green one, be a whole lot worse if it were moonlight blue!

 

[Slo-Sho]

That SHO took a 45mph impact like a friggin champ! Did the airbags go off? How is the radiator support? Inner fenders, subframe move at all? That SHO looks very fixable from the pix.

 

[SHOstopper1992]

If you cant get the car, ask your insurance company if you can atleast get the motor out of it.

I had a buddy with a Honda Civic crx and a 400hp B18 engine in it, and he asked the insurance company if he could have all the performance parts off of it and the engine.

Insurance company let him.

Also had a buddy who wrecked his wrangler, did the same thing, made $500 after selling his lift and tires, after finding factory parts to restore it to ride hight...

 

[TYSHO]

That SHO took a 45mph impact like a friggin champ! Did the airbags go off? How is the radiator support? Inner fenders, subframe move at all? That SHO looks very fixable from the pix.

Not fixable.

My old SHO had an impact like this, it just tweaked the hood up higher since it was a little faster at 50mph and t-boned a big Ford truck. It looked fixable from looking at it but when I chopped the front end off, you could see the structural damage in the metal that was twisted.

FWIW, my insurance company didn't charge anything for me to keep the SHO. I told them I had performance parts on the vehicle that I would like to remove and that I could haul it off to a scrap yard when done.


I wouldn't recommend keeping the SHO unless you have another SHO or plan on purchasing another SHO. There's not a lot of money you can make with these as a parts car, compared to how much labor you will put into removing these parts. I've saved a lot of my old SHO parts and still have them come in handy. Once you remove the rolling status, I found that there was no interested for any scrap yard to come pick my SHO up. I ended up cutting it down to pieces, hauling it off in the back of a pick up truck to a metal yard for a total of like $185.

 

[RonPorter]

sucks bro

but look at it this way. it was a green one, be a whole lot worse if it were moonlight blue!

Less than 6 mos after I sold my Moonlight Blue '94, the new owner wrecked it. He looked into getting it fixed by a friend witrh a body shop, but even back then, it was too expensive for him.

 

[sperold]

If you have storage, and it is inexpensive to recover from the insurance company, then keep the car. Pull off the front fenders and look at the rad saddle and the inner fenders. Up until a few months ago, you could buy a new rad saddle on RockAuto.
Where I live, half the Mustangs have spliced-in inner fenders and rad saddles (rot or collision) and they seem to do OK, even with their massive torque and overweight cast iron engines. The rad saddles are the same from 89 to 95 and the inner fenders go right up into the 2000's without much change.
How did the battery and the radiators do in the collision? And do your doors still close OK?

 

[Slo-Sho]

Not fixable.

My old SHO had an impact like this, it just tweaked the hood up higher since it was a little faster at 50mph and t-boned a big Ford truck. It looked fixable from looking at it but when I chopped the front end off, you could see the structural damage in the metal that was twisted.

Where are the impact pix? What structural damage in the metal are you talking about? Your collision with "a big Ford truck" is much heavier than a Volvo, meaning it's more likely to 'give' or 'move' out of the way instead of your car taking the brunt of the force.

 

[TYSHO]

It's on an old computer put away, the wreck was like 7 years ago. I can assure you my SHO didn't take all of the impact. The height of the truck did that when the two wheels popped up off the ground and the rear end slid around out of the way. The damage I had is VERY identical to the pictures posted from this accident. The only thing is, mine was mushed down a little bit lower on the front drivers side headlight area, resulting in a hood that peaked up a bit higher making its passenger side viewing of the engine a little bit larger than the posted pictures. It's not much of a difference, just a little though. All of the tweaks in the wreck posted, are all the exact tweaks I experience in my SHO from a wreck that impacted the very same region of the front end.

For anyone who has chopped the front end off, the damage is done. If you try welding on the inner fender part, good luck. If you cut it off, you'll notice it's not a box with four sides to weld. You have multiple layers of metal inside, and every single one was tweaked and twisted on my SHO.

Sure, it can be fixed but not anywhere near perfect. Your alignment will never be the same, nor will the structural strength be the same. The vehicle was labeled total for a reason, the vehicle is totaled and any attempt to fix it would never bring it back to being a safe vehicle for any insurance company to insure.

 

[sperold]

This is a little bit off topic, but I will mention it for information sake.

Totalled is not what it used to mean.
My Mustang convertible was totalled when thieves sliced a small hole in the convertible top (for a wire to get the door handle) and broke the ignition key switch to get it running.
My daughter uses the car in a college town, and some kids needed a ride home in the winter. There was no vandalism or no other damage inflicted.
The insurance company "totaled" the car and paid out around $4000.00 to me, mainly because they did not want the aggravation of taking the car to a top shop, then on to a mechanical shop; and then listening to a whiny client who claimed every little new thing that went wrong with the car, was a result of this theft and joyride.
I fixed the car for around $2000.00, using the best top (inner and outer and a glass rear window with a defogger) that can be bought, a new ignition key cylinder and new H-rated tires as a special treat. Then I had the car painted, bought a new sound system, bought a remote starter, alarm and keyless entry system and still had money left over.
I got a safety inspection (at the insistence of the insurance company) and got insurance on the vehicle, and it is as safe or safer than it has ever been.

Your instincts tell you that the insurance company would only write off a vehicle that is beyond repair. In my case, they could have fixed it for $2000.00, but chose to write it off for $4000.00 to save them time and aggravation.
If you wonder why your rates are high, remember this story.

 

[lowc]

sorry to hear the bad news hope no one was hurt

 

[newshofan]

thanks guys..my girlfriend and i are axperianceing some back pain still but were alright. as for the two in the other car im not sure one passenger was not wearing their seatbelt in the other car and i know they had to go to the hospital. but aside form that insurance is giving me almost 2600 for it they wouldve given me about 400 les if i kept it. i wanted to do that. but i dont have the time knowledge or money to do that. im sure there are plenty of people on here and other places that wouldve wanted parts from it and im sure i couldve made some money back. i just put a new alternater on it a few days before...it sucks..but hey im about to buy another one. hope i enjoy it as much as i did this one even though i put alot of work into it

 

[Slo-Sho]

Sure, it can be fixed but not anywhere near perfect. Your alignment will never be the same, nor will the structural strength be the same. The vehicle was labeled total for a reason, the vehicle is totaled and any attempt to fix it would never bring it back to being a safe vehicle for any insurance company to insure.

I strongly disagree. A totaled vehicle can be road worthy again with something that is called a 'Salvage Title'. There are many vehicles traveling America's roads these days with salvage titles, I'm sure much to your dismay. And as far as a vehicle being brought back to being safe for any insurance company to insure...well, that's what inspections are for.

 

[sperold]

I guess that is the end of the saga.
You can probably get your alternator back if you ask, when you go to clean out the car. The $400.00 sounds high, but they must have a salvage place that has agreed to take any car for that lower limit, and between the cats and the total weight, they will have their money back before they sell any parts.
You might be able to get the rims and tires if you take 4 replacements, wouldn't hurt to ask while you are mentioning your sore backs.
They will want to close this file, and for that, you have to be happy with how things went.

 

[newshofan]

yea i think i may be out of luck on getting any parts off it theve already moved it to one of there secure lots in the area, but im sure i could come up with some reason to go back and get something off it theve given me 2590.08 for the car not bad i guess. enough to buy another one