Well, that was a waste of about 3 grand and about a hundred hours of labor lol...

Yesterday morning, I was driving with my girlfriend to get some lunch, and came upon a stoplight on a particular one-lane road I was driving on. We stop, my girlfriend is laughing, all is well.

A minute passes, and I happen to look up at my rear view...and see a ram-bar, frame-reinforced Jeep Wrangler barrelling at me at least at 40 mph.

I managed to get "oh sh----" out, before my poor recently rebuilt LY MCS is turned into a yellow pancake between military dude's snowplow Jeep and the trailer hitch of a TrailBlazer more than a car length in front of me.

Final integral damage:
Rear bumper
Trunk Lid
Radiator
Front Bumper
Hood
Dashboard

Our necks hurt like hell, my poor darling college daily-driven baby is a heap of junk of $3k in brand new parts, and another of the unicorn-status liquid yellows is dead....

At least the idiot Jeep driver got two moving violations--one for hitting me, and another for me hitting the car in front of me. That's how hard he hit me.

At least we're okay...but it's time to say goodbye to my dear old Sunflower.

Gonna try to replace it with another R53...i'm not done yet!

 

Ouch sorry to hear. Hope you don't have whiplash or lasting injuries.

Let me guess, the guy in the jeep was texting?

 

My girlfriend was dancing like a total goofball to music in the passenger seat minutes before, and pointed out "that creepy guy in the Jeep staring at her" a few intersections back....that same dude was the one that hit us.

Yeah we're fine, our necks are really sore though. GF went to the hospital last night to get checked out...only strained neck though no injuries.

 

"Only strained neck though no injuries?" A whiplash strained neck IS an injury; give it time before deciding what to do about it . . .

 

See, all the guys at work are acting like I should be playing this up....but I'm not about to play injured so that an older dude pays for my tuition for no reason. I told the insurance and the police that my neck hurt, but I will not pursue the physical component of the accident unless one of us starts feeling something serious in the next few days. My girlfriend visited the hospital yesterday and the doctor (and I) giggled at her because she was like, totally fine, but my neck is actually hurting more today. I might go get myself checked out in a week or so if the pain keeps up. For now though, let's ignore our physical condition.

...I've never done this whole big accident thing before. Any and all reasonable/moral advice is welcome....How do I maximize how much I get for my MINI? I have at least 3k in new parts in her, plus countless hours in my garage, plus days off of work to fix it when it was broken, etc.

 

Be very careful with the neck, if you start getting any pain in your arms or leg that do not go away with simple over the counter drugs for aches and pain, you may have a herniated disc. I had this happen, took two days for the nerve pain to start, and nerve pain sucks big time.

 

That sucks! my condolences on your loss. The best comfort I can offer is my own story, which the short version is I bought a MINI new, custom ordered from the factory in England in 2003, in 2014 after 155,000 miles and way more smiles than that; my MINI met it's end at the hands of a snow plow.

The redemption part of the story is the replacement mini I bought had only 55,000 miles when I bought it and was in pristine condition (and still is in fantastic shape) So while it's impossible to fill the hole left by the first car, the second car can be a great thing.

My advice is get everything that you can off of/out of your current car. The company is going to scrap it so I took my floor mats, sprint booster, jack, tool kit, owners manual, sprint booster, everything that wasn't bolted down, and if I'd had a strut brace and intake, I'd have taken them too.

The other thing is don't accept a low ball offer from the insurance company, while you won't get everything you put in back, he hit you so his insurance company should make you whole.

 

Wow, great advice (sorry about the snowplow, screw all these big cars with their frame-reinforced ramming devices)!

Yeah, umm...I may have grabbed the back seats too lol...do you think I could go back and grab carpet, front seats, etc? Or is that too much? Is there a way I could grab my poly motor mounts?

Has anyone ever successfully convinced an insurance company to let them go back and have a pull-a-part session on their babies before they were scrapped? I have quite a bit of money just sitting in that MINI.

 

I don't think they'd object, though I did the pulling of parts before the insurance adjuster looked at it I think.

 

Sorry to hear man. And yeah don't play with neck injuries man. Nobody saying play it up but definitely let someone have a second opinion besides the hospital. It may come back to haunt you later on in life. JS

 

My wife was in her brand new Toyota, two lane highway, car in front of her stops to make a left turn, she stops. Car two cars behind her barreled into the car behind her, smashing the car to the mid section, which she then smashed into the car in front of herr. Wife's car totaled , wife was unconscious. This happened about 4 months ago. I just got off the phone with her in regards to seeing another specialist in regards to the constant headaches, unable to drive at night because the lights from oncoming traffic bothers her. I took her last week to a specialist to get her jaw popped back into place. Wait for a few weeks to see how this pans out. I would call a lawyer now though. You say that you are not trying to get paid, but the guys behind you was at fault, I bet that if you got to the site where it happened, you won't see any skid marks from him applying his breaks. He is at fault and needs to be accountable for his actions. You don't want to be a year out with pain that creeps up on you and having to pay out of your pocket for something someone else did to you...

 

I am glad you guys were not seriously hurt. But I am irritated that is one less LY MCS on the road.

Strip it of anything and everything you can. Grab all the receipts and pull together all documentation you can for the work you recently completed. Work on a value for Sunflower and THEN add in all the new parts you put on to be repaid. Think cost recovery for all the money spent and hard work getting Sunflower road worthy again.

On the injury matter... dont act like it is nothing. You are not asking for a free handout, but keep the door open in case you have a physical issue not detected yet. Insurance companies like closing the door on those items when you should or might need PT. Lost wages from work... all of that gets counted. Again, that is not a free handout, you are just looking to be put back into the situation you guys were in prior to Mr. Creepy hitting you.

 

If you are feeling any pain whatsoever regardless of how little there is you should have it checked. These kinds of injuries may seem minor at the time but if you don't get them treated you may end up with pain for the rest of your life and the need for major surgery down the line.

 

I think I'm going to buy it back from the insurance company! If anyone's interested in any parts, let me know in this thread!