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What’s the KBB?
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Nevermind.
First, nice anti-Semitic slur in your description. :tup: Great way to start out a thread asking for help.
Anyway, I’m sure they’re going to use Lexus parts, but they will be LQK parts (aka, used), not OEM new. She didn’t have brand new parts before the accident which means she’s not entitled to brand new parts after the accident. Collision insurance covers restoring your car to pre-accident condition, not all new parts so the car is way better than before the accident.
I’m a little surprised the airbags didn’t go off but I suppose hitting something immovable dead center like that doesn’t take too much of an impact to do that much damage. Probably not enough to get the g force readers to trigger the bags.
Insurance will have to stand behind the repairs and will be paying either way. It doesn’t look bad enough that I would bother fighting to get them to total it.
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insurance uses NADA for values not KBB.
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Fight them, get them to total this thing out.
The truck will never be the same with 13k in body work!
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It’s kind of shitty when this stuff happens. JayS is on point though with the parts. They always go with used parts. That doesn’t make them shitty parts and it doesn’t mean they will be falling apart or covered in rust. The lexus dealer will make sure they put quality parts on. I wouldn’t worry about that.
Did they dig far enough into the car to look for frame damage?
My father had a similar issue with his car. He got into a bad accident in his FX45 (some kid hit him). They said there was ~20k in damage, but 24k was the point where they would total it. They went back and dug for more damage and tried fighting with insurance, but in the end, State Farm decided to fix the car. He’s probably going to sell it when he gets it back.
If the collision shop doing the work knows what they are doing, you will not be able to tell a difference.
Obviously resale will take a hit if she tries to sell it private sale. Any one with car fax will see the work that was done to it. If she normally trades cars in, for another Lexus for example, the dealer probably won’t really care.
That would be my biggest reason for trying to get them to total it.
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Who said it was smoking though? It’s pretty obvious the radiator popped from where all the damage is and when people see massive amounts of steam a lot of times they call it smoke.
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Tell them you are ok with them using generic parts or used parts but you want the same warranty on them as the new ones.
Leaking oil can be any number of things. It could be as simple as a cracked oil cooler which is most of the time mounted up around where the car took the hit.
And any good collision shop can straighten a frame. That’s obviously the first thing they do before they attempt to hang new body panels. They get it back to the point it was before the accident. The car is just as safe as it was prior to the accident.
QFT.
Shoddy shops are the ones that people have gotten impressions that cars are never the same after an accident with frame damage. My brother is a Bodyshop tech, and has been for going on close to 25 years. He’s repaired some crazy stuff over the years and made a lot of cars better than they were before the accident that brought them in. It’s using a reputable shop, not Bobs hack it apart shop.
Where did you take her car to get checked out for the repairs? Last time I checked if it was Northtowns, they were using CarStar collision on Transit. Not a bad place, but there are much better out there.
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Ok, Never delt with them so I cant say yea or nea; as for BBB… that’s a joke. Just do a search for reviews on google for them and see what comes up. Also, check the shop out, make sure it’s clean and well kept. Most “good” shops are sticklers for being clean (at least in my experience).