With three cars, you think I wouldn’t ever have a break, right?
Um, well…
Damn it, you’re right. I don’t.
The S2000
She’s my only well-behaved girl at the moment, knock on wood. All she’s asking for is a new battery… Um, she’s still using her factory one I believe, so she’s very entitled.
Of all things she’s “doing,” she’s my hopeful entry into the state fair’s photo contest. I mean, come on, this picture is great isn’t?! Even if I get nothing, I now have this in an 8×10 print with a pretty silver and black mat, and it’s going on our wall!
What do you think? Will I get an award for this?
The 240SX
Thankfully, all her drama has never left us stranded… Well, for long that one time, but we figured her out. Right now, it seems the clutch is stuck in, and we aren’t sure what the problem is yet. One candidate is the clutch slave cylinder, or even just the clutch needing to be bled. We’ll figure her out, and it isn’t so bad since she’s not required to pull DD status at any time. (It’s just nice to have her available.)
The Miata
This is gonna sound bad, okay?
September 30th saw us get rear ended by a dump truck. I was leaving early for school, and there was some awful wreck on the highway that had traffic backed up all over the place. Well, apparently the guy “didn’t see me,” even though he was sitting behind me for a few hundred feet and didn’t seem to have an issue.
Ended up hitting me, nearly pushing me into the Camry I was behind. I freaked, to say the least. I’m not much of a screamer, but yeah, I screamed. I was scared that my car was about to get crushed between a dump truck and a beige sedan. Thankfully, I was able to move and get out of the way, before getting pushed into the car in front of me.
She suffered no front end damage, and the back end was very, very mild, see?
Getting pushed is NOT fun. Could have been so much worse though.
The driver’s side tail light was broken, her rear finish panel was broken and her bumper was scratched to hell. You ready for the best part? The truck kept going. After assessing the damage to my car, I stood for about five minutes screaming and otherwise throwing a tantrum. I felt a ton better, though, and was quite calm when the cops showed up. I swear I just got my S2000 back from the body shop, I was pissed that my other car got hit now.
Before the cops showed up, some very, very, very sweet woman stopped by with a piece of paper to give to me. She had seen what had happened (a lot of people did) and had gotten information from the truck that hit me. I swear she was my lifesaver, as I was much too worried about my car to get anything about the truck that hit me. Not the smart thing to do, but I’m rather irrational when I get emotional.
But yeah, she was awesome. And I don’t know who she is or anything… Just an average woman in an average, white SUV. While I normally don’t believe people are nice anymore, I felt insanely grateful, and I still do. I’m not sure if we would have ever caught the guy without her.
And yes, they did get the guy. He said he “didn’t see” me. Um, how?!? But I don’t think anyone can answer that for me. I was told he’ll be cited, and he’ll have to go to court for it. His employer also knows… How good can a hit and run look when you drive a dump truck for your job? And while he might not have felt his truck hit me, I’m scared that if I hadn’t have been able to get out of the situation my car would have been totaled. (I would be devastated if I lost my Miata…)
A quick call to my favorite mechanic revealed that, lo and behold, he had a spare driver’s side tail light! That afternoon we picked it up and it was on the car before night. We tried out best to buff out some of the scratches on the bumper, but it’s rather bad to be honest. One scuff is down to the plastic, and won’t be fixed unless it’s painted. Which is out of the question — she’s too faded for an accurate match to be possible. For now, she’s battle scarred.
Now if I could get that rear panel here...
Someday she'll get that new coat of paint.... Someday.
As for the rear panel, it’s on back order… Happens to be a hard to find panel, ironically one commonly needing to be replaced by the Spec Miata drivers. Whenever that ships, though, she’ll have a non-matching body panel… So I’m contemplating working on the fender flares I want and a trunk spoiler. It might look okay with multiple black panels for a bit, but I’ll have to see how I feel about an “artful” two-tone look.
All in all…
My car drama makes me sooooo glad that I have very little people drama. I get my people drama fix from my friends — they can deal with all the problems, I do NOT want them for myself!
Life is surely not boring with three cars, especially when 2/3 don’t like to cooperate all of the time. (Usually it’s my two, go figure!!)
Update: I’m working with the insurance company on a claim. So far, they have the information and a copy of the report. On said report, the police’s estimate of damage was $500, so I’m hoping that maybe we’ll get enough to fix her panel and to recoup the tail light cost. I’m waiting on a call from the adjuster that the company’s going to use, we’ll set up an appointment and end up going from there. It’s kinda nice to be on this side of things, because nobody’s wondering how the car got damaged, we’re just working on getting her fixed!
10/05 — Meeting with the adjuster tomorrow… We’ll see what’s what after that! I’m more bummed that the 240′s not running right more than a hole in the Miata’s panel…. Weird for me to say that! I miss driving my Silvia though.
10/06 — The adjuster turned out to be a really nice guy, it was the most pleasant experience with an adjuster that I’ve ever had. And, from the sounds of it, we might make a little bit off of this whole incident… Well, only because the scratched bumper doesn’t bother me and isn’t worth fixing IMO, repainting it would never work. However, the tail light and rear finish panel will be covered, plus the money to refinish the bumper and paint. I’m supposed to find out tomorrow what the final repair estimate will be, and then I’ll get paid for that!
No related posts.
Years ago, my husband and I suffered similar car drama. For 3 years in a row we had massive accidents in three separate cars. I guess we got all of our accidents out of the way, since we haven’t had one in about 5 years (knock on wood!).
Good luck on your Miata, we too had one a few years back and even a little fender bender can do quite some damage.
-Little House
Ouch, I hope I can get this over with for a while! I can take the fix-it drama, I just don’t like having to do things because of something someone else did. Adjuster’s coming to see us today, so we’ll see what he says this afternoon.
That’s so true — a couple of our friends with Miatas had one or two totaled out because of hail damage earlier this year, it doesn’t take much when they’re older. It’s something that bothers me a lot, knowing that all it takes is one wrong move and my car could be toast, whether it was my fault or not.
Sorry to hear about the miata, but wow that could been a lot worse. And the guy just drove off, the nerve of some people.
Its scary driving around small cars sometimes (I drive a 76′ 280z) knowing that any small accident could be the end of your car.
As for the picture, concept looks great, but execution could have been a little better.
Another thing I noticed, the I heart your fake wheels license plate. Don’t you have fake wheels on your s2k? Heh…
Yup, tell me about it. 280Z? Sweet, I love those old girls.
I would be terrified of someone hitting that… Insurance companies rarely understand the true value of cars other than just dollars and depreciation.
Picture was one I took a few months back. I’d like to think I’ve gotten better! Feedback is always appreciated, though. I can never get enough.
I’m finally getting over the weird feeling of pulling out my camera all of the time. I do need to stop caring what other people think. If I wanna take a picture, I should take the picture!
She’s my husband’s car.
Lol, but yeah, she’s going to get her own set of Enkei’s in the next year or so. Then again, those Rota’s are styled after a set of Spoon’s that were never made in the same size/offset and were out of production when the Rota’s were started. So, in a way, it’s not as bad as the fake Volks. (Or that’s how we explain it. That and he’s taking his time to research the right size/offset for the RPF1′s for the S2k, and what’s involved with that. Fenders have to be rolled, but how much and all that.)
Yeah I know what you mean about the camera, I love taking pictures too with my D40. I always feel weird when people are watching me though. Especially since people always start muttering to each other about how they wonder what I’m taking a picture of, etc., when I can clearly hear them.
I just browsed your flickr and your pictures certainly do seem to be improving. I like the sunoco one, although I think if you zoomed out a bit to fit it all in it would look really good. I’m sure with some light ps’ing your s2k picture could be made quite nice.
And about the wheels, (I was actually thinking of Regamaster Evo’s heh) what your saying makes since. It takes time finding the right size wheel/tyre combo, what needs to be done to the body to fit the wheels, the best deals, etc. so I totally understand. I just thought the plate was a little ironic hah.
Exactly! Or when I’m taking a picture of someone’s car, if they aren’t around I feel very odd. Like they’re going to come running out of no where with a stick and chase me off, heh. That and sometimes I think some just think I’m fascinated with the weirdest things (took pictures of a Honda Ruckus the other day) or that I must live in a hole. I snapped some of an old 80′s era Carrera a few weeks back, and I think some people thought I’d never seen one before…. Completely not true, I have a lot of Porsche pictures. And friends with Porsches.
Thanks! I sure hope I am! Practice practice practice I guess. I’m more concerned with developing some sort of “eye” or style for it than the mechanics, those can be ironed out but nobody can tell you how to really pick out a good picture. Maybe that’s why I like photographing Porsches — there’s always some little things that become utterly fascinating and make for good pictures other than the car as a whole. (I’d like to get a good one of the keys in the ignition, thinking about it now.) I’m hoping to get a dSLR in the next year or so, but for now it’s me and my P&S Elph. I have plenty to work on before I upgrade!
Oh, it is and it’s been pointed out before. But then I lay on the excuse, “Well, this is my car and that’s his car,” which works well for it.
But he did pick out my RPF1′s, so….. He does have good taste. 
Gosh especially when it comes to cars. I’m always afraid people are going to think I’m trying to break into their car or something. For instance, while vacationing in California a bit back, I came across an amazing EG civic with a really interesting cage setup/stripped interior/bucket seats/the works, and was trying to snap a picture of the interior really fast because to anyone behind me it easily could have looked like I was trying to pick the lock or something. And strangely enough, I too saw a beautiful red 80′s carrera in the parking lot of a local borders bookstore, and excitedly whipped out my camera. I didn’t even notice the guy was sitting in his car with the engine off giving me an extremely weird look. I just kind of pretended i was aiming at the ground and walked off. Photographing Porsches is great though, so many beautiful little details. But back to pictures in general, like you said, the “eye” is really the most important part. Once you have that down you can easily make most pictures look somewhat decent in photoshop. As for dSLR’s, I would recommend the Nikon D40 to anyone. I just got one for my first dSLR a few months ago and am very pleased with it. Although its fairly old, for the price it can’t be beat.
No kidding! I just about did that the other night, when I saw a great looking xB and didn’t realize the guy was still in the car. Lucky for me, he was a friend of a friend so we were taken over, introduced and I got to snap all the pictures I liked. (And my friend was kind enough to tell him that I liked his car, somewhat of an issue for me. I’m always worried about sounding insincere with my car compliments when I really mean it.)
I grabbed some pictures of a really nice Lexus yesterday in a parking lot, the guy had parked close enough to me that I could stay by my car and get decent shots. It’s those sorts of finds that I like, and usually make for more interesting pictures than some of the cars at meets and autocrosses or the like. Autocrosses here are great for my Porsche pictures, though! And the Porsche club is so nice, I had one guy pretty much leave me his slant-nose to myself, door open and all.
Hoping to at least get to a point where the pictures aren’t so bad un-edited. All of mine aren’t, because I don’t have photoshop. I’d love it, since I haven’t used it in years and actually had a class that used it. But it’s the subject matter and the way it’s set up that are key, and editing usually can’t help with either.
Haha, I always feel weird telling people I like their cars too. For some reason I’m always afraid their going to think I’m making fun of them.
As for editing, Photoshop is pretty costly. Try GIMP, http://gimp.org/. I didn’t want to buy photoshop and this is a great alternative, if not even better than the real thing (not to mention its free).
Oh, for what it’s worth, we just put a nice set of silver RPF1′s on the S2000 today.
(For a ridiculously good deal and a day trip.)