Maciek

First of all big "what's up" to everyone. I haven't been on the org for about 2 months now. Ever since my girl got banged up. Some of you might remember my post about an accident I had on icy interstate, and might have seen the below damage:





It was posted on December 10th, 2003 "Pictures of my baby after a meeting with a guard rail". It got 2 pages worth of replies.
To sum it up, after I took it to a local mechanic, who is an acquaintance of mine. The verdict was $600 in mechanical damage (suspension) and $3000 in cosmetic. I had to get it back to driving condition, so I payed the $600, but chose not to fix the body for now, because I thought it wasn't worth it on a car with 135K miles. I just figured I'll drive like that, maybe fix it little by little. Front fender was the cheapest and easiest, but the rear as you know is a continuous body part and couldn't be just unbolted and replaced and required cutting it out and matching with another cutout, welding, polishing and the whole 9 yards. So I said forget it.

So I drove it beat up until I went to Chicago for the Auto Show. Myself being Poland-born, I couldn't pass up a good Polish deli. While getting my kielbasa and golabki i picked up a weekly newsletter with some Polish community info and advertisments, and came across a couple of ads for automotive body work.
I know if my car was in Poland I could have gotten it fixed for much less than $1000, so I made a few calls, showed it to some guy and for exactly $1000 the car is back to its original shape. Front fender, rear bumper, tail light, front headlight corner - replaced. Rest got pulled and straightened. They didn't even have to cut the rear 1/4. Total of 7 body parts painted + parts + labor = $1000
Now that is a heck of a deal!

Big thumbs up to the Polish craftsmanship

If anyone out there is in the Chicago area and has some body damage let me know and I will get you in contact with the dude. He has his own body shop and a crew, so it is not a bang-it-out in the back yard deal.

MaxedOutOfCash

good to see everything worked out....
good find on the cheap body shop .....now it's time for those home made red/clears

Maciek

Hell yeah! You know I had them laying around for about 4 months now (the inserts). I also got the y-pipe hanging in the garage, parts for the air intake too.
Obviously I wasn't going to put it on that beater.
I am wondering now should I keep the car or sell it and buy something else with less miles. Maxima is the first choice of course!

MaxedOutOfCash

if it runs good, keep it...
i decided to sell mine & i'm not going to go with another nissan...even though i love them & can't complain, i wanna try something else... i'm waiting more towards the summer but i threw it out there just for the heck of it...

check sig..

Sam

wariow

iTrader: (3)

need some pics man of the bodyjob!

Maciek

I didn't put them up, because it looks as any other non-wrecked pebble beige.
But seriously, only a very close inspection would reveal that something was done and the very few minor imperfections just wouldn't show up on camera.