The new news 24 thread

[Spottedlaurel]

Dare I suggest it got taken away with a load of other write-offs to avoid storage costs?

[wuvvum]

The garage still has it.  Phew.  They just hadn't updated the record properly.

[wuvvum]

Right then.

Now that I know where the car is, I've emailed the third party insurer to say I'm accepting their offer with the salvage deducted.

The garage said that they would need an email from the insurer confirming that they can release the car to me, which is fair enough.  @JJ0063, as our resident motor claims expert - is that something the insurer would send as a matter of course, or will I need to bug them to do it?

[JJ0063]

12 minutes ago, wuvvum said:

Right then.

Now that I know where the car is, I've emailed the third party insurer to say I'm accepting their offer with the salvage deducted.

The garage said that they would need an email from the insurer confirming that they can release the car to me, which is fair enough.  @JJ0063, as our resident motor claims expert - is that something the insurer would send as a matter of course, or will I need to bug them to do it?

I hope you declined the first offer? They’ll usually send one improved/final offer before saying that’s all they’ll do.

Re the notification of release, I’ll be honest it’s not my area as I’m based in new business,  I’d pressure them although I imagine they’ll be relatively quick on it as they may end up incurring storage charges if not. Depends on the arrangement they have I suppose! Knowing how useless some can be, I’d definitely bug them about it. 

[JakeT]

On 26/02/2025 at 11:54, SiC said:

Just come back from Iceland. Not as cold as I expected - apparently they're getting a warmer winter at the moment and it's been sitting above freezing a lot. 

Was a great trip, albeit I'm knackered and need another holiday to rest. My credit card is also very much feeling the pain.

Gosh, funny you should say about the cost. My Mrs booked us a surprise trip a couple of years ago for my birthday, in the middle of December. We were lucky and got lots of cold. Example…

But the cost of stuff was high. An example being, my suitcase got stuck locked shut. I mean nothing would unlock it. After resorting to destructive methods to get it open, I needed a new bag. Finding a samsonite shop was proving difficult, so I looked for the next next thing. A sports shop, an Icelandic company called 66° north. They had a nice little duffel bag which I bought. Not caring about the exchange rate I didn’t check until I saw on the bank statement it was £110…

The worst bit being their stuff is great, and Ive bought a couple of jackets. On sale mind, else I’d need to sell a kidney.

 

Gorgeous country though, and I’d like to go back again.

[wuvvum]

2 minutes ago, JJ0063 said:

I hope you declined the first offer? They’ll usually send one improved/final offer before saying that’s all they’ll do.

Nope.  Their first offer was significantly better than I was expecting and to be honest I'm fed up with the whole bloody thing now - I'd rather get the whole thing finalised than drag it out for the sake of maybe a couple of hundred quid more.  As it is I should be able to repair the car using secondhand bits from a scrappy and still end up with a 4-figure sum in my pocket, that's good enough for me.

[comfortablynumb]

19 hours ago, plasticvandan said:

Not car related,but some will appreciate,due to a sudden strong bout of the tisms,childhood nostalgia and the need for such a thing to actually use,I've just finished lightly refurbishing my recently acquired 1970 Hoover Junior Dirtsearcher (with light) I consider this to be the Morris Minor of vaccum cleaners..in fact I think the Minor and the Junior are probably two of the best things Britain ever made😅

Paging @beko1987 🤣

[SiC]

1 hour ago, wuvvum said:

Nope.  Their first offer was significantly better than I was expecting and to be honest I'm fed up with the whole bloody thing now - I'd rather get the whole thing finalised than drag it out for the sake of maybe a couple of hundred quid more.  As it is I should be able to repair the car using secondhand bits from a scrappy and still end up with a 4-figure sum in my pocket, that's good enough for me.

When my civic was written off, I was told the salvage cost is related to the car value cost. Above a certain value (£2500 iirc) the percentage of value to make salvage jumped up. So the claims handler said I might as well take a lower value to make the total money back effectively more. 

Last year I got a letter from my insurer from back then with a cheque. Apparently their internal audit reckoned they underpaid me and this cheque was the difference plus 7 years interest. I seem to remember I took £2500 value and paid £250 or something like that as salvage. 

My civic was written off in similar circumstances. Came back with no rear bumper and all the rear boot wiring taken out. I put a new crash beam on (old took most of the force) and replaced a black plastic exhaust surround trim to make it good to go again. Plastic bumper was fine as bendy flexible plastic didn't really show much in the way of marks - except the four rings of the Audi grille that hit me from behind... They pulled everything off to discover the boot floor had a dent in. Obviously needed to be back pre-accident and a 10yr old car wasn't worth doing bodywork on. So they sent it back to me exactly how they left it - of course no point them spending time+money putting it back together again.

My insurer said they'd only cover it third party until I got a fresh MOT on it. Which I did and I called them up to tell them it was fresh, they then updated their records to make it fully comp again. 

[wuvvum]

Mine is Cat N so hopefully no new MOT required.  Apparently they've only removed the rear bumper, but as with you they've not put it back together as the car was a total loss - and my bumper was quite damaged anyway.

Not sure how to get it home - obviously it's going to need a new number plate (it'd need one anyway as that was damaged in the crash) and in theory if I'm driving it home in daylight I should get away with no rear fog or number plate lights for the 15-mile drive home, so I might get away with going down there with a number plate and sticky pads, bunging the plate on and driving it home, but I don't know what it looks like behind the bumper and if there's going to be sharp edges, wiring hanging down etc. so I might need to get it transported.  Which if the insurer provides the notification of release before the Rover runs out of MOT, I can do myself with a hired trailer.  Otherwise I'll have to pay someone.

[SiC]

10 minutes ago, wuvvum said:

Mine is Cat N so hopefully no new MOT required.  Apparently they've only removed the rear bumper, but as with you they've not put it back together as the car was a total loss - and my bumper was quite damaged anyway.

Not sure how to get it home - obviously it's going to need a new number plate (it'd need one anyway as that was damaged in the crash) and in theory if I'm driving it home in daylight I should get away with no rear fog or number plate lights for the 15-mile drive home, so I might get away with going down there with a number plate and sticky pads, bunging the plate on and driving it home, but I don't know what it looks like behind the bumper and if there's going to be sharp edges, wiring hanging down etc. so I might need to get it transported.  Which if the insurer provides the notification of release before the Rover runs out of MOT, I can do myself with a hired trailer.  Otherwise I'll have to pay someone.

Mine was only a Cat N too from memory. It definitely wasn't on the V5 too from memory and I think only Cat S have that on there?

They transported it back to me onto my drive FOC. This was Direct Line from memory. Maybe quicker and thus cheaper for them than taking yard space?

[wuvvum]

The garage the car is with don't have their own transporter.  The transport to the garage was arranged by the accident management company, but I'm not letting them anywhere near the car again!  Going on their recent performance it'd probably end up at Copart.

[HMC]

Made the most of the fine weather today to air out the interior of the farina

Its generally pretty watertight but the front screen leaks a bit. Time for some captain tolleys to seal it.

[beko1987]

2 hours ago, comfortablynumb said:

Paging @beko1987 🤣

I've already got a small envelope of parts on my desk to get a label on and sent over 😂

Not many other places to go when you just need 2 specific screws and some belts 😂👌 

[wuvvum]

Off on a post work collection mission (not the Ampera!).

Folding bicycle deployed. 

[wuvvum]

And home.

[hairnet]

omg

kiltox of the east?

[wuvvum]

Nah, he won't touch one of these again - couldn't sell the one he had.

(Although mine was cheaper.  And is a nicer colour.  Remains to be seen whether the battery is in better condition though.)

[wuvvum]

Also - night photography mode on this new phone is bloody impressive.  It wasn't anywhere near that bright outside when I took the photo.

[wuvvum]

9 hours ago, richardmorris said:

Ooh, esse-vu-bi, very nice!  That's a few million quid's worth there.  One of my favourite Ferraris, much better looking than the overrated GTO imho.

[loserone]

4 hours ago, wuvvum said:

And home.

Holy shit you pulled the trigger 

[Metal Guru]

9 hours ago, JakeT said:

Gosh, funny you should say about the cost. My Mrs booked us a surprise trip a couple of years ago for my birthday, in the middle of December. We were lucky and got lots of cold. Example…

But the cost of stuff was high. An example being, my suitcase got stuck locked shut. I mean nothing would unlock it. After resorting to destructive methods to get it open, I needed a new bag. Finding a samsonite shop was proving difficult, so I looked for the next next thing. A sports shop, an Icelandic company called 66° north. They had a nice little duffel bag which I bought. Not caring about the exchange rate I didn’t check until I saw on the bank statement it was £110…

The worst bit being their stuff is great, and Ive bought a couple of jackets. On sale mind, else I’d need to sell a kidney.

 

Gorgeous country though, and I’d like to go back again.

I went there several years ago at this time of year. Just before we left they had their highest one day snowfall for 80 years. Luckily I’d booked a 4wd car ( with studded tyres) which was brilliant. You could drive at 50mph where you’d be lucky to do 20 in normal tyres, but then a tour bus would overtake doing 60+.
Had a whole week of sunny days and clear cold nights with the northern lights every night. 
Really recommend going, especially as it’s just 2 hours away (Edinburgh) by EasyJet.

[Six-cylinder]

11 hours ago, wuvvum said:

Ooh, esse-vu-bi, very nice!  That's a few million quid's worth there.  One of my favourite Ferraris, much better looking than the overrated GTO imho.

250GTLusso for me please. Only 240bhp V12, but who cares when they look so good.

[hairnet]

11 hours ago, wuvvum said:

Also - night photography mode on this new phone is bloody impressive.  I wasn't anywhere near that bright when I bought the car.

 

[richardmorris]

11 hours ago, wuvvum said:

Ooh, esse-vu-bi, very nice!  That's a few million quid's worth there.  One of my favourite Ferraris, much better looking than the overrated GTO imho.

1960 Ferrari 250 GT SWB Berlinetta by Scaglietti | Cliveden House | RM Sotheby's

 

[hairnet]

26 minutes ago, Six-cylinder said:

250GTLusso for me please. Only 240bhp V12, but who cares when they look so good.

308 gt4

330gt

400gt lambo 

please

grazie

[vulgalour]

Did a tip run in the ex-@Amelia van today and it performed perfectly.  I was a little concerned the overheating issue might reappear since we were loaded with scrap metal and broken furniture, and got stuck in heavy traffic.  Happily we didn't get any overheating issues at all so I think we can consider that particular malady cured.  We did have to do a little emergency stop when someone in one of those Mercedes vans converted into a minibus things for a family of presumably 18 kids pulled out in front of me, which the van also did well at happily!  My apologies to the person behind me who must have wondered wtf was going on when I accidentally put it in reverse to set off afterwards because of that lack of lock-out between first and reverse and the gate being so very narrow.  I'm hoping that, as suggested on the Clementine forum, the gear change issue is just worn bushes and some new ones will put it right again, it's really the only thing that makes the van unpleasant to pilot.

Princess is more comfortable though, I do miss my velourious loungemobile already, have to crack on and get that welding sorted this weekend.

[Asimo]

On 26/02/2025 at 16:01, wuvvum said:

Now all I need is for the accident management company to tell me where they've put the car!

Wherever it is, check they didn't put it there with a forklift!

[uk_senator]

To me, this is good news, a 1-Owner from new Dolomite 1850 that lives near me just went past my CCTV, whys this good news? Well, I checked it a couple of months ago & saw that it had had a log book change last November, so, I assumed that the owner had finally hung his driving gloves up (or worse), & it had finally got a new owner after 52 years, but no, maybe he`s it put into disabled use?

Whatever it is, I`m really happy its stayed with him!  
 

Some not so good news, there was a a guy a few miles from me, he was a good age & long retired, but loved his old chod. I`d spoken to him a few times, He had a Mk4 Escort van he got from his old workplace (it had failed its first MOT on rust in its rear chassis legs, he purchased it from his employer, repaired it & kept it), he also had a Mk5 Escort, + was restoring a Morris Oxford MO which was completely stripped & under a cover on the drive (which was where the van is in the pic below last time I went). I`d knocked a few times in the last 18 months or so, for a yap, & the see if he fancied doing a bit of welding, but got no answer, then the cars went off his drive, & the house started looking abandoned. Sure enough, the van & car changed log books in Nov/Dec 2024.. God knows whats happened to the Morris. I assume he`s left this mortal coil. He was a nice bloke. R.I.P. mate.. 😔




 

[stuboy]

My son is in Amsterdam and these everywhere.. what are they?

[catsinthewelder]

 @stuboy Canta or something like that, there was one on here recently.

Edit