Fix A Dent Or Finish Supercharger Install???
 

A while back a guy in a Chevy truck hit my car and put a dent in the drivers side rear quarter panel. I should be settling with the insurance on Monday and be getting about a 1100-1300 dollar check. So, the big question: Should I use that money to have the dent repaired and painted? I'm thinking I can live with a dent and worry about fixing it and painting the car later.

Instead, I could buy a Megasquirt II kit, stimulator, wiring harness, and wideband for around 600, Walboro 255HP for 100, external fuel pressure regulator 100, used 550 cc low impedance injectors from a 88-91 Supra for hopefully 100 or less, a cheap bov for around 50, and Devils Own Water Injection W/Progressive Controler for 280. (I may be able to get those injectors for 20 bucks if I can find them at a local junkyard, that charges 5 bucks an injector.)That's a good 1200 dollars or so worth of stuff and that would get me running on MS II and pretty close to having the supercharger going. I already have the blower and brackets to bolt it to the car.

My Parents are saying I should fix the dent, but I'm thinking that can wait.

So, if you were in my situtuation, and you had a supercharger sitting in your living room, what would you do with the check?

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I personally would fix the dent. I would just be afraid of rust forming and causing the repair to be more expensive later on. If I waited I might be tempted to cheap out on the body work, and shitty body work is ugly.

That being said, speed is more fun.

nothing a hammer cant fix :gay:

Get the check. Replace the taillight yourself. Have a body shop repair the dent and blend in paint. Use any left over money to buy the megasquirt. Build and install the squirt on the car stock. Save up for the rest.

You can get a used lamp for maybe $25-$40. You have easy access to the inside of the dent to pop it back out and bang it smooth as well as you can. Popping out the sheet metal will likely push the bumper skin back into shape too. Sanding, bondo, rattle can paint - Ghetto that baby back into shape. You'll drop a few hours and $100 bucks into making it look a whole lot better at 20'. With the supercharger you'll be going too fast for anyone to notice the crappy repair job.

You're young and still living at home? When else can you be so irresponsible as now? Later in life you'd never be able to take money intended to fix a car and spend it on FI instead. Which would you rather have, busted and fast or pretty and slow! I'm voting for fast.

+1 replace the taillight and fix the dent yourself and use the rest of the money for mods

I say fix it, but only because I can't stand messed up body panels. If you shop around man you can definitely get that fixed for a decent price. Might not be perfect but you'll have extra money for the project.

I got backed into the same spot on my miata. The dent was smaller then that but ended up costing $1200 to get fixed at a shop correctly. I would say take the cash and then bang it out yourself. I should have done that but was stupid and just had insurence cover it all.

Don't bother with the Walbro or the FPR. With 440 / 550cc injectors you will have *more* than enough fuel on the stock pump to feed any supercharger that can actually fit under the hood of a Miata.

But definitely +1 on the Devil's Own WI. And while you're at it, buy a 5 quart "g-man" race kart fuel tank to put in the trunk.

Call Microfinish and order an aerosol can of self-etching primer, factory-matched paint, and clearcoat. Pull the taillight and bumper cover, and just sand that thing down and re-spray it. The idea being to prevent it from rusting and make it look less conspicuous, not to score points at Pebble Beach.

Joe, the reason I'm upgrading to a 255HP. is because I have a 100 shot nitrous to feed fuel. Right now I have seperate fuel system for the nitrous. My pump is rated at 300 LPH, which is plenty of volume, but at 8 PSI. Magna pointed out that under boost, that pump won't work. Basically, I'm planning on building a new fuel system to replace the factory one. Do it once and do it right. I will likely have two regulators, one for the engine, and a 1:1 rising rate regulator for the nitrous system. That way, The nitrous system always gets the proper amount of fuel and dosn't go lean if I'm running boost. Running lean with nitrous will kill an engine quick, so I don't want to take any chances.

I'm definately thinking about doing my own repair to the fender. Probably going to do my best to pull the dent out myself and repair and paint it myself.

Nitrous... Missed that one. Kept seeing that picture in your sig but thought it was a joke.
:nxsmile:

Nope, not a Joke. Thanks for the advice. When I get ready to fix the dent, I'l give Microfinish a call and order all the right stuff. For Your Viewing Pleasure...

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Uhm. Yeah. Wow. :eek:

Seriously, that is some gorgeous plumbing. You're at that stage where it's tempting to just leave the part on the dining room table so you can sit and admire it, rather than actually installing it onto the car.

Hey Joe, I tried to change my pic in my sig and now I can't figure out how to put it back in there. I have the images on Photobucket, but I can't get it on my sig.

you want to use img /img tags with [ ] those brackets.
Won't the photobucket links work?

Do I post the link under 'option 1' or actually in the text of the sig? I still can't get it to work.

Edit: I got it working guys. Thanks.

Simply put the following text into your signature, on its own line, exactly as it appears below:

[ATTACH]215796[/ATTACH]

I copied that URL out of your signature, and incidentally it does not seem to be working at the moment.

In settling with insurance who did you take your car to? Did you do what they wanted and go to the shop they recommended? Did you run around and get several bids? When you got bids did you tell them it was for insurance? I hope you didn't do any of those things! If you got several bids they will only pay what the lowest priced company bid. If you went where they wanted, they get a kickback. If you tell people it's for insurance they send a copy of the bid to the insurance company behind your back.

Life lesson: When your cars busted and it's on the insurance companies dime take it straight to the most expensive shop in town and only to them for an estimate. When you get the check take the car to the shop you would go to if you had to pay for it yourself (re/ CHEAP!)

Hold out on settling as long as you can. Offers generally go up as they feel the pressure to settle.

I did get estimates, but the insurance dosn't know that nor do they have any copies. I simply walked in and asked for an estimate. I got 3 bids all within 40 dollars of each other. 1100-1140. The adjuster is supposed to come look at it, make his own estimate of the damages, and offer a check to settle. For unknown reasons, I filled a claim and they called my dad instead of me. He told them we wanted the entire car painted, not just that spot blended. They said they can't do that, but they would send someone to look at it and offer us a check to settle, so we will see what he offers.

they won't do that. but you will be needing a rental car for the 4 days your car is 'in the shop'. :)

Pat your pops is 100% right hold out for a complete spray a spot fix is very hard to get right. Also after the money comes in buy some boddy hammers get the fender close to right primer it and then take it to get sprayed. I also think i have a decent stock rear tail if you are interested i can try to dig it up. Esp if it will fit. OEM wants like 200$ for that shit dude. Make sure to spec that you want it to be brand new OEM all the way ;) GL dude.

take that to paintless dent repair, they can pop that bitch out prolly under 200 bucks. then buy a used lamp. Id at least get the dent painted, I could live with the scratches tho. I doubt that really even needs painted.

dude have you ever banged the first fender on a car that shit will be fucked once they beat it out no paintless place can remove a dent like that. The metal has been stretched and compacted. To fix it you will need some body hammers. It is not that hard and a set of body hammers can be had for 50$ or so at a local auto paint place.

I think the paintless guys are primarily for small dings, not crunched fenders. Sounds like you did OK on the estimates! Prices in Missouri are a whole lot more affordable than here! $1100 for the fender replacement/repair & paint, bumper skin replacement & paint and the new lamp seems pretty good. That's good when you have to pay for stuff, but stinks when you are hoping to use the insurance check for something else.

Have Dad stick to his guns and you might get a little more money, but I've never heard of anyone getting a complete repaint before. Good luck!

Put a big sticker over the dent and call it a day.

Will the stock 1.8 handle the S/C AND the 100shot?

I'd say fix the dent. I looks like you have MAD TYTE JDM drifting skills with the dent there.

Let it rust and call it the latest JDM craze. I'm sure the punters that are all down with the JDM thing will be splooging in their pants and defending it as art.

It' probably won't handle the supercharger alone. I'm going to be running somewhere between 15-20 PSI. It's a 1 Liter twinscrew with a 2:1 ratio. We will see. If I track it with the blower and use the bottle, you know there will be a video.

I don't think I'm putting a sticker on my car.

See if they'll at least throw in enough extra to have the paint "blended", which would probably be at least that whole panel, the rear deck lid and driver door. Might bump the estimate $200-ish

Well, I ended up settling with the insurance company. I got 1138.00 out of them. I was hoping for more but I suppose that will do. I don't plan on fixing the dent as I plan to finish my supercharger install instead:bigtu:

Well, I washed my car for the first time in 3 months, and I immediately noticed that dent. Now it sticks out bad. I got out a rag and soaked it in soapy water, wraped it around a piece of 1" pipe and started scrubbin the area. I was able to remove all the marks from the bumper and about 90% of the scratches from the fender with this method. Apparantly the marks were just on top of the paint. Now I'm left with some purple scratches that don't want to come out. I tried wetsanding with 1500 grit (out of 2000 grit at Autozone) but this scratched the clear badly. So, I got out the dremel with a polishing wheel and went to work and managed to get out the purple marks too.

Then I figured while I was at it, I would try to see if the dent would 'pop' out. NOPE. I tried hitting the little dent above the bigger one with the wooden end of my hammer and it poped the metal out a little and knocked off the paint where I hit it, so I stoped. I then went and purchased a hair dryer and 2 can's of keyboard cleaner (CO2) to see if that method would work. I tried it first on the door as I had a small ding there. I heated up the area as hot as a hair dryer would get it, then I flipped the can of CO2 over and sprayed the area liberally and about half the ding poped out. I then tried the same approach to the larger dents in from the accident and it didn't work. It may have poped a little bit out of the top ding.

I suppose I'm going to get a new taillight and just live with the dent for now. I know I could take a hammer and beat the dent out, but I know know it will ruin the paint in the area so I suppose it will look better with paint and a dent. At least it won't rust until I do get it fixed.

Here's some pictures:

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Man, those center caps always turn yellow, weirdest thing ever.
ETA on having the superchager setup complete?

Yea, I was going to paint them. My mirrors were the same way and I repainted them with ultra silver 191 from duplicolor and they look great. However, I had a new set of wheels on order so I didn't paint those caps. I suppose I should as they do stick out.

I can't believe how much better my car looks with the stock wheels with a hardtop. It looks best with the Motegei's with the hardtop off and top down.

Well, my dad has my 1138 and I'm hoping to get it in MY bank monday or tuesday. Then I'll order a bunch of stuff and a Megasquirt. I'm hoping to get the megasquirt on and go ahead and remove the stock intake and then I can mount the supercharger on for good. I

I'm hoping that I can finish it during the christmas holiday's when I'm out off school.