Update on the Car

We have not had much time to post lately, mainly because of the car. It has consumed our lives since the deer collision. Saturday finally brought a lot of progress. After the accident, we were left with just a few options. We have never carried comprehensive insurance, which would have covered deer accidents. Obviously, hindsight has near perfect vision, and now we wish we would have had it. In our defense, neither of us have ever hit a deer in our combined 30 years of driving experience! At over $100 dollars a year, that would have amounted to roughly $3000 we have saved; the Kelly Blue Book value of our car is less than half of that, so, I guess it is nice to know that in some, weird way I feel like we have beaten insurance company on this one. Of course, we still have a wrecked car!

So, getting back to our options. First off, we could have junked the car and tried to find something else. But then you are left with wondering how the other person took care of the car, and what you are getting. I recently sold a car to a student who has had nothing but problems with it, and I don’t need that karma right now! I know I have kept the oil changed in this car, and generally not driven it too hard (except the night I hit the deer). And anything at all is going to be at least $2000 dollars. If I took our car to be fixed, it would no doubt far exceed $1000. So the question became, “how much money do we want to spend on our car, considering it has high mileage?” We obviously couldn’t sell it for much, especially in the condition it is in. We really don’t want to spend too much money, and we absolutely don’t want a car payment.

Well, to make a long story short, I called around and got estimates from salvage yards (sounds so much better that “junk yard”) and found out the following:

Used Headlight Assembly: $55
Used Front Fender: $60
Used Bumper: $80
Used Door: $125
Used Hood: $100

Before tax, that would be a grand total of $420, and those are just the items that I thought it would need. I‘m sure a professional would have found many more things wrong. Hmmm, that is a lot of money. So, I decided to purchase the headlight assembly and the fender, and see how far my “absolutely zero experience doing this” could take me.

I installed the headlight assembly and the fender, pounded out the dent in the door, and did the best I could to pound out the hood. It still looks bad, but considerably better than it did before, and at least the car can now be driven. From a distance, one might not even be able to tell it is damaged… well, from a long distance anyway. Oh, and the person looking would have to be color blind too, because our green car now has a blue fender. Oh well, for $133 dollars, what can you expect. Stupid deer!