Now I'm REALLY berkeleyed (RIP Samurai)

Jay wrote: ^^ If you offered some board members a place to crash I'm sure you could entice a couple pairs of hands to your tropical island for a week to swap the shell & all the good bits onto the new frame. Just saying. :P Hell, I'd be down.

I'd be up for that!

Got news today that I'm going to get a rental car. Good thing I don't really need it because I would've been out of a car for weeks at this point. If gas expenses are covered that would help a lot. The car will be some kind of bargain-bin 3rd-world-market-only economy sub-compact, nothing to get excited about.

Whoa holy E36 M3 this is going even worse than I thought possible! The stealership decided that the Samurai, if it were in good condition, would be worth $750! The rattiest Samurais that can haul their own carcasses around rarely go for under $1500. If I total and buy back I will be left with approximately dick.

It's worth noting that the other driver's insurance is with a company that I used to have my Toyota insured with, and being their customer was horrible. Turns out they're horrible at both ends.

My regard for the entire concept of auto insurance is even further diminished today...another thing I didn't think was possible.

Edit: To give you an idea of this Samurai's street value, a few months ago a guy in a supermarket parking lot saw it and was determined to get me to shut up and take his $3500 for it.

That sucks man. I know rules are different down there but can you a)show them adverts for similar vehicles to prove the value or b) do you have small claims court in the islands?

Good luck

$750? That might be what a stealership would pay at auction. For Sale By Owner pricing would be waaay different. There has to be some function to refute that number in the system there...

Is there any sort of insurance oversight organization?

This is going to be challenged whichever way it can be challenged that's not likely to leave me even poorer - so anything short of lawyering up is on the table.

Just for fun my mom called up the last mechanic who did an evaluation on the Samurai and listed the mods that I sent to the insurance company, and he spitballed $4500~$5500. Which I think is a little on the high side, but vastly more sane than the stealership's number.

Not gonna be any news for a while because things are starting to smell a bit lawyer-ish. The other driver's insurance company (which, again, I used to be a customer of and it was terrible) did something very crooked today.

Do we have a GRM legal-eagle phone tree anywhere? Similar to the side-of-the-road network?

In reply to GameboyRMH:

Well, out with it man! What very crooked thing did they do?

Ask the insurance company to show you the comps.

OK well you're still not going to hear much about the insurance side of things, I'm actually lawyered up now, but in terms of getting the valuation adjusted it's a "take it or leave it" situation, the only way the valuation can be changed is if they've made a factual error about the vehicle - which they might have - in which case they'd have to do another valuation...I'd still be fully at the mercy of whatever number the dealership pulls out of their ass though. If they say my Sammy's worth a little more than the tires that are on it, that's what it's worth, and since they're also the local Porsche dealer, if they say your air-cooled 911 is worth $5k you're screwed too. Next time I see the guy with the air-cooled 911 I'll warn him.

I stopped by the shop where the Samurai is today, looking to get work started on fixing it on my own dime. Finally got a look under the hood and it's not too bad under there:

The body was actually torn completely off the frame here, but there's no damage to any of the important mechanical bits. Coolant overflow tank's still good, and the wiper tank just has a few large cracks I might be able to hot-glue up. The exhaust downpipe had just been pried away from the header at the springloaded joint. Also someone was helpful enough to pry the fender off the tire. Axle looks as straight as it was before. Of course it still looks crooked because...

The passenger side spring is pretzeled. I have a spare at home. This one was a little tweaked before from a mud arena event anyway. You can also see a sharp bend in the frame here. That shock doesn't look too good either.

The firewall's a bit warped and this area ahead of the windshield cracked open, revealing rust:

This is about where the obvious and severe damage stops, but the shop has taken some measurements and even the front-right corner is a bit out of square now.

Here's a brake problem:

If it were the only problem I don't think the brake pedal would be going to the floor though, pressure in the rear circuit should've prevented that, so the MC is probably also blown out from my weight landing on the brake pedal on impact.

After talking with them it seems that the best way to fix this is to straighten and reinforce the current frame, remove the whole left side fender area bodywork and face panels, straighten what's left of the body and put a used LS fender and face panels back on.

Gameboy- If you need any US sourced parts, we have ways to get stuff to Barbados. Happy to help! I know how painfully expensive imported things can get in the islands, but this is what we do every day and have more than a few tricks up our sleeves.

Doesn't look like I'll have to import anything so far, thanks for the offer though.

Got a good source for all the body sections yesterday, although the best faceplate section I can find will need a lot of restoration work. I already got a plastic face cover in good condition.

cwh wrote: Gameboy- If you need any US sourced parts, we have ways to get stuff to Barbados. Happy to help! I know how painfully expensive imported things can get in the islands, but this is what we do every day and have more than a few tricks up our sleeves.

Does this involve cigarette boats or midnight air drops in to the ocean? If so i'm in to help. One day all the time spent playing grand theft auto will pay off.

Many years ago there used to be a really nice cigarette boat docked on the south coast I would always admire. Had a name on the side, "Just Playing Around" or something like that. Then one day I saw it in the newspaper...yep, it was a drug running boat.

Glad to see it's at least going to get fixed, one way or another. Those are such cool little trucks, it's a dark day any time one gets lost. Sorry you're getting such a runaround with the insurance company though. (We're forced to pay thousands into that for years, for ...what, exactly?)

Here are the two metal sections I've got. The faceplate didn't entirely survive removal, the bottom part will have to be refabricated.

I'm very strongly considering these for replacement headlights:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019I0UBLU/

So the metal faceplate wasn't in good enough condition to use. It can be completely disassembled so I'm gonna go back to the guy I bought it from and see if he'll cut me a deal on some different top and bottom sections that I can assemble a whole good faceplate from. The bodywork shop is scheduled to start the straightening work today.

I ordered a plug-in headlight relay harness from LRO that routes the headlight current through relays and a direct battery connection rather than through the trafficator switch, and converts the Samurai's strange reversible-polarity headlight wiring into something more traditional that can work with LEDs. I think I'll smuggle in the headlights themselves, they're not too big. I'll have a chance just before the next offroad rally.

GameboyRMH wrote: I think I'll smuggle in the headlights themselves, they're not too big.

All i know about smuggling i learned from prisons. Where they strip search.

OW!

Haha no I don't have to do this:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/9CAyOJbsaU8

Got the headlight harness about a week ago:

Work has been held up by paperwork/legal bullE36 M3 involving a dispute over the year of the Samurai. AFAIK it's always been a '95 and has parts that are consistent with this, but the dealership asserts it's a '91. The year of manufacture is not marked anywhere on a non-US-market Samurai, and theoretically a '91 could have a few parts changed around to make it indistinguishable from a '95.

If it isn't resolved in time, I'll have to swap the body purely for paperwork reasons (legally making it a different vehicle), leaving the current main body section as a piece of scrap metal for the parties involved to squabble over. This will cost more money.

Wait...so there are no VIN plates anywhere on the car? The VIN would have the definite answer...

No, in most countries cars aren't given VIN numbers, just chassis and engine serials. On the Samurai, those two serials are stamped onto a plate on the firewall, and that's all you get. Most cars also have the year of manufacture somewhere on that plate but Samurais don't.