Glad you're still with us! She looks pretty down and out in this photo. Almost like one of the "CARS" caricatures.
Wow Fred, this is really somethig. I'm glad your as OK as can be. And the car don't look all that bad once you get it taken apart. Even if the frame rails are bent, they won't be that bad to true up once it's stripped of the parts. Ya gotta look at it as another learning experiance (rebuilding), and the budjet should be better this time. Building the car fragile enough to fold up a little under the hit, but stong enough for driving is the way to go. Like having a crumple zone up front there. If ya built it like a tank, it woulda hurt you bad, instead of the car. And here's another reason for having a car with all the legal shit done right. You never know when this stuff is gonna happen. If you ain't legal with the paperwork, you are always in the wrong and up the creek without a paddle. Fred, best of luck in getting this resolved. A good lawyer goes a long way in earning his fee on these issues. As long as his cut don't leave you with not enough to work with. Frank
Your collision coverage isn't in question here. It's the Police Officer who was at fault wasn't it? Your Collision coverage would only be needed if you...say...went off the road on your own or caused an accident yourself or something like that. Your the one who made the mistake kinda thing...then YOUR collision coverage kicks in and fixes YOUR car and your Public Liability coverage fixes the other car that you hit. If your the victim then the OTHER guys Insurance must make it right to you. Thats the way it works up here anyway...
Don't take this as a slight to your car at all, but I have to wonder if you're almost not better off the car being a T-bucket if only because you can whip out a Total Performance or similar catalog and wave it at the city's insurance company if they balk at the estimates? I hear you on the insurance deal - you might want to look and see if you were actually paying for the collision or not - if they were charging you, seems to me they should still have to take care of you. As a side note, that could be a hell of a lot worse - I had a deal where my insurance company boned me for over a year on a truck I'd sold, they never took it off the policy - so when I made them fix that and send me some money back, they did something that cancelled all of my insurance - they kept billing, we kept paying, I was already pissed at them for screwing me and changed to State Farm... next thing I know I get a letter from the DMV that I hadn't been covered for X number of days and they want me to pay the fine or turn in my plates. So for at least a month I'd been driving around and had I been in an accident - or even just pulled over - I would have been fucked, my car would have been impounded. It was some kind of computer glitch where to remove the one vehicle they had to cancel the policy and reinstate it and the reinstate message never made it to my state DMV because their computers won't talk to anyone else's... they said anyhow. I got them to straighten it out with a couple phone calls, but it was an unnecessary hassle. Well, hopefully the lawyer can get the city to settle for an amount that will make everything better, and you have no long term effects from it all.
Glad to hear your OK. Everything else is just an anoyance. My biggest fear is that I would have done something stupid building my roadster or worse yet have a momentary lack of reason behind the wheel and hurt my wife or someone else. Thats even worse than hurting yourself. I hope the cop feels like shit, but if it follows the program he probably feels like he got a raw deal and deserves a bonus or extra vacation time. Rebuild it better the second time. I always seem to have something I would have done differently after it's finished.
Once the dust settles, take AnchorBoy up on his offer, I've seen his work and he is a heckuva nice guy
The Jalopy Journal
