I was involved in a minor accident about 3 weeks ago that required my 93 Ruby go to the body shop for repair. There were deep scratches on the front bumper and the hood from the barbed wire fence I ran into. Since the paint on the back end was faded, I asked the body shop owner to paint that too. This guy has an excellent reputation in the Oklahoma City area for repairing body damage on Corvettes. After 2 weeks of it being in the shop, I finally got it back yesterday. It looks fantastic! I can now see why a lot of people love the Ruby color.

My car had many imperfections in the body, which was neglected by the 2 previous owners. It only had 33,000 miles when I bought it a little over a year ago, but it looked worse than its miles. As I said, the paint on the rear end was badly faded from the El Paso sun it was forced to be exposed to day after day by the previous owner. The were stress cracks in the fiberglass on the hood and rear. It looked as though someone sprayed some type of chemical near it, because there were spray marks all along the driver rear and back bumper area that would not buff out. The windows were out of alignment when I bought it, so that everytime you would close one of the doors, you would hear a sickening clank as the window would hit the inside of the doorway. This produced large gouges in the paint. There were markings on the hood that looked as though there was bird crap left on too long, which ate into the paint. Anyway, all of this has been fixed, as well as the accident damage! I would say 90% of the car has been repainted. The only part that wasn't painted was the bottom of the doors. They have a few paint chips in them, but he gave me a can of left over paint to touch them up.

The guy went above and beyond what his estimate called for. He was only going to do the front bumper, cowl and rear bumper. He didn't charge me any more than the estimate. The total cost was about $1600. This was to repair the accident damage, repair the stress cracks and paint roughly 90% of the car, which I think is a good deal for the quality of work he does.

My car looks almost brand new on the outside and is beautiful. Instead of looking maroon, even when waxed, it now has the full ruby complexion. You can definitely see more of the red in it now.

Now I have to replace the weatherstripping and get several other things fixed. It's still a money pit, but at least its a good looking money pit!


[Modified by Ozman, 10:36 AM 6/25/2002]

 

Great to hear you gotten taken care of well. Wish I heard this more often.

:yesnod:

 

I just got the insurance check 2 get the 35th done. Were gonna paint the whole car over and add a couple of other things, I can't wait 2 get started on her. :cheers: :seeya

 

Good to hear she's a Ruby again! :cheers:

 

How did you get into an accident? Just curious. Glad to hear she's back to normal.

 

Nice to hear that there are some reputable shops out there. Glad you got your Ruby back. :cheers:

Mark :seeya

 

 

:cheers:

 

I took an off ramp too fast, went airborne and crashed into someone's living room. :D

Actually, here's what happened. A truck or SUV ran a red light, then stopped in the middle of the intersection. Since it was a 2 lane road, and raining that evening, I could not stop in time and had to swerve left to miss him. I went off road into a barbed wire fence. The truck sat there for a moment, then decided to take off. I didn't get his license plate number. There was about $1200 damage to the front of the car from the barbed wire. The $1600 estimate I got included painting the rear bumper, which was badly faded. The body shop owner went the extra mile and fixed the other imperfections in the car for the same price as his original estimate.

By the way, I was going 45 mph in a 50 mph zone because of the rain.

 

Rubies Rule!! :D

 

That's great...glad it all worked out and you got a sweet result!! Rubies are cool!! :)