Calgary Car Talk

[MichaelS]

I was very glad to have my car in the underground parkade last night. But somethign came to mind as I looked out on the street. There was a Car2Go car in front of my building. Nobody was rushing to move that inside. The hail in my part of town didn't seem to be the golf ball sized ones in the far north, and I didn't see any car damage when walking to work this morning. But, I wonder how many (if any at all) of the Car2Go cars got damaged.

[kw5150]

Originally Posted by suburbia

You certainly can't group it with the 330/35/M3 either. But really, if you look at performance, the 325i is like the dodge neon

2005 BMW 325i is rated at 0-60mph 7.0 sec.(manual), 7.8 sec.(automatic)
The more common and somewhat basic Dodge Neon RTs do it in 7.4/7.5 sec, right in line with the BMW 325i.
2005 Dodge Neon SRT-4 rated at 0-60mph 5.3 sec.

You're a douche. For more fast cars like mine that also do 0-60 in 7 seconds.....http://www.zeroto60times.com/

[MichaelS]

Why? Because he provided facts?

[floobie]

Acceleration is but one metric. A Subaru Impreza WRX STI accelerates about as fast as an M3, but the two cars are hardly comparable. One is a fast luxury sports sedan, the other is basically a fast economy car. The same can be said for a Neon and a 325i. In that case, the BMW is obviously much better appointed, has much better build quality, and will also handle dramatically better. I mean, you can get a Toyota Rav4 with a V6 that makes it as fast as an old Audi S4. It's just a pointless comparison.

As for the hail stuff: My insurance company is proving to be rather difficult to get a hold of. I was hoping to get a claim in ASAP today, as I'm off to Germany for two weeks tomorrow.

[CorporateWhore]

Yep, just counted about 8 of them on my wife's Volvo.

Seems like we've had at least 3 hail storms this summer already...this one was definitely the worst by far.

Can't even get to the automated response portion of my insurance company's phone line.

[Calgarian]

That hail storm was crazy intense downtown, very glad my car was in the underground parkade. I hope everyone managed to get their cars inside or under something, I heard some breaking glass while I was on my balcony (at least I think I did, the hail was very loud) from the street below. It's weather like that that I refuse to park outdoors, won't even look at a place if there is no parkade.

I am also curious about car2go cars and how they managed getting hit by golf ball hail.

[DizzyEdge]

I took a car2go today which was parked near 16th ave and Centre, and it was fine. The roofs seem to be some sort of plastic looking material (I know in some jurisdictions the car2gos have solar roofs). I didn't actually check my (currently not starting) car for dents.. I know my roof got hit by what sounded like bricks falling onto it, maybe 50-100 times before the machinegun small hail took over

[LFRENCH]

My car took a few hard direct hits, however there is no damage. I was sitting in it as the hail was cracking down and wow. That is the worst hail storm I have ever seen, albeit hail on the west coast is pretty rare. I feel sorry for people who have thin tin on their cars

[mersar]

My versa seems to have fared ok, a few minor dents but nothing compared to the existing ones from the storm in 2010 that gave it quite a beating. My wife's Matrix seems to have escaped any damage too.

[Calgarian]

The damage seems pretty random, some people's cars are pretty much a write off while one down the street was undamaged.

[floobie]

Anyone have any idea what goes into repairing this sort of thing, and how costly it can be? Can most of the dents just be sucked out?

[Calgarian]

Originally Posted by floobie

Anyone have any idea what goes into repairing this sort of thing, and how costly it can be? Can most of the dents just be sucked out?

Small dents can be pulled out, especially if they are soft with no jagged edges. The metal (and thus the finish) will not be perfect as the metal was stretched slightly when it was deformed. A friend of mine got a whole new roof on his car last year after a big hailstorm.

[kw5150]

Originally Posted by floobie

Anyone have any idea what goes into repairing this sort of thing, and how costly it can be? Can most of the dents just be sucked out?

All of the dents can be "massaged" out using a special tool. They do it from the inside of the car. They will have to remove your headliner (celing) of your car. The process is very well done but expensive because of all of the labour.

Complete write-offs for older cars are common. They can also offer you a cheque, and you can still drive the car but will have no more hail coverage.

[lubicon]

Mother nature is a fickle lady. I live in the northern portion of Tuscany and it hailed for all of about 1 minute at our house and pea sized hail at that. There was not even enough to accumulate on the ground. No damage whatsoever to our neighborhood (knock on wood).

[kw5150]

On the way to saskatoon last friday night, my man and I were caught in a massive storm for 4 hours. A number of times, (maybe 10?) everyone had to pull over because of the zero visibility. At one point, some large hail came down and I got a few tiny dents. I thought for sure it was worse. I thought my drivers side windows were going to break.

On the way back to Calgary last night we caught just the northeast tip of the storm for about 10 minutes and MAN WAS IT INTENSE!!! Im glad we didnt have to drive through it. You normally dont see that much bolt lightning. Usually storms are dominated by sheet lightning with a couple bolts. There were bolts striking dead ahead of us on the highway. Creeped us out a bit.

Oh and we also saw about 50 bucks (deer) on the way home. No joke. Most of them were bigger than 3 points and were in large groups of just bucks. Hardly saw any does at all. I have never seen that many bucks.....ever. It was like a game of dodge the deer on the way home. We took the side roads, but probably will stay off them after dusk next time.

[Vascilli]

My friends were lucky because we drove out to Bragg Creek to watch the meteor shower as the storm rolled in. We watched it wondering how bad things were. Turns out my neighborhood wasn't touched.

[Tropics]

I was in Ranchlands at a fire party in the back yard when it started.

The insane thing about there is that there was NO warning about the big hail. It was not raining, it was not hailing, we were watching lightning to the north and suddenly WHAP! something huge hit the trampoline I was leaning on hard enough to make the whole thing vibrate, then nothing for a couple seconds as we tried to figure out what it was. Then suddenly another piece of hail tore through a tree and broke two fairly significant branches off. 5 seconds later we all bolted for cover because while not alot of hail was falling the pieces coming down were HUGE right off the hop.

It was dumb luck not to get drilled by one of these things and they were actually a fair bit bigger then golf balls where we were, we used then as ice cubes in drinks after the storm and they lasted hours.

from Weather network

[suburbia]

Originally Posted by Calgarian

Small dents can be pulled out, especially if they are soft with no jagged edges. The metal (and thus the finish) will not be perfect as the metal was stretched slightly when it was deformed. A friend of mine got a whole new roof on his car last year after a big hailstorm.

Originally Posted by kw5150

All of the dents can be "massaged" out using a special tool. They do it from the inside of the car. They will have to remove your headliner (celing) of your car. The process is very well done but expensive because of all of the labour.

Last time (2010) I was at the university and the golf balls did a number on my prior car. This time luckily I was parked inside. Anyway, regarding getting hail damage fixed, I wanted to share my 2010 experience.

My car had dings everywhere. Hood, roof, both front fenders (one worse, and the other side just on the top), both rails over top the doors, rear right bumper, rear hatch. Went in to the insurance appointed appraiser - said $2,300 and that all could be done with paintless dent repair. I questioned that as a number of dents were on ridges and some were on metal that was part of the box frame of the car (front pillars) but the guy insisted that it was straight forward. Next day I get a call from the insurance that they want to offer me a great option - pay out the $2,300. Knowing that the assessor / adjuster was in their pocket and my suspicions, I declined. So I went back to the same shop that did the estimate. They suggested going directly to the paintless dent repair places, but I said that as they had made the estimate, they can figure it out. So they took it and $8,000 later, including a new hood and a huge amount of body work that the paintless dent repair guys couldn't do, I got it back. Of course, I sold the car after that as it was no longer a virgin. Anyway, watch out for those great cash offers after low-ball estimates!

[suburbia]

Originally Posted by floobie

Acceleration is but one metric. A Subaru Impreza WRX STI accelerates about as fast as an M3, but the two cars are hardly comparable.

That's a fair point. BMW is an interesting make though. When you look at the Japanese and American cars, they separate their luxury vehicles out. Toyota/Lexas, Honda/Acura, Nissan/Infiniti, GM/Cadillac, Ford/Lincoln, etc. BMW doesn't do that. So when you look at a 316/318/320/323/325/328/330/335/M3, firstly, that is a heck of a lot of variations, but the point I'm making is that is goes right from competing with a Corolla right to a Lexus IS, and that includes from a fit-out standpoint. A 316 interior doesn't hold a candle to a 335 or M3 interior. This is particularly obvious if you are in Germany where the lower end 3 series vehicles are not seen much different than a corolla, neon, etc. This works to BMW's advantage as in North America, there is a BMW mystique and so people will do anything to be able to say they have a BMW. At the end of the day, they stamp out about 500,000 of these things per year.

[Innersoul1]

Up on the west side (Aspen Woods) we didn't get a drop of rain or hail. But the show in the sky was pretty damn impressive!