I can’t believe it. Not to be outdone by Kevin Pierson…

Last Friday morning I finally got my fender work done from the shaving fiasco that took place when I had my suspension installed. The body shop did FANTASTIC work and as I was leaving the body shop I told the owner that if I ever needed any work done that I’d call him. It looks like I’ll be calling him this morning.

Well, here’s the story. At 5:30am I was driving to work (actually I was at work) and IT happened. There was a deer that jumped out in front of me while I was going around 35-40 mph. With plenty of room to stop I applied the brakes, not engaging the ABS, and safely slowed down to 20-25 mph. As the deer ran from the driver’s side of my G to the passenger’s side, I made sure to keep my eyes on it to make sure it didn’t jump back out in front of me. As I down shifted into 2nd gear and made sure the deer was safely out of my way ANOTHER DEER decided to follow the first deer. BANG!!!!! The sound and feeling of the impact was heart breaking.

All I could think of is “what happened”? I never saw the second deer, nor did I expect for a second deer to make sure my vehicle would succumb to such a fate. After I realized that I hit something (it actually took ~1 second for me to realize what had happened) I came to a stop and IMMEDIATELY jumped out of my vehicle to see if the deer was ok. Being pitch black and slightly foggy, all I could see is one deer running away. I am still not sure if it was the first deer that I missed or the second deer that I hit, but either way the speed was slow enough that the deer will hopefully be ok. (Side note, only a little bit of blood was on my vehicle and none was on the road that I could see, so there is a little bit of hope for all of the animal lovers reading this.)

Now onto the selfish, car lovers portion of the story. My G was an equal victim in this accident. After not being able to see the deer I immediately called our Security out to the accident and they showed up with a spot light. We looked for the deer and then looked at the car and saw the damage. The hood was dented, bent and scratched. The bumper was cracked and the clear bra was torn. The driver’s side headlamp was completely demolished. The front grill was ripped into pieces. The passenger’s side head lamp is cracked internally from top to bottom. The driver’s side front fender has a little bit of damage and so does the passengers side front fender. I did not open the hood for fear of not being able to get it to close properly again, so I’m unaware of any damage that is beneath the hood. The good news is I’m ok. The airbags did not go off, nor do any fluids appear to be dripping out from under my vehicle. From the looks of it I’ll need (at a minimum) a new hood, new bumper, new grill, 2 new head lamp assemblies, and at least one if not two new front fenders. A new clear bra will be needed as well.

Any guess as to how much the price will be to fix this damage?

Oh yeah, I’ve filed a claim with my insurance company already and found out that this is a “not at fault accident” and will fall under the comprehensive portion of my insurance. A $250 deductible will be eaten by me, and hopefully the insurance company will cover the new clear bra and installation costs.

Any suggestions on new grills, hoods, bumpers, etc… that I can have sent out within 1 week maximum would be appreciated. I only have rental car reimbursement for 30 days, so 1 week to get the parts is all I can wait with Christmas coming up…

-Neffster

 

Sorry to hear your G is damaged, but at least your okay....
If the impact did that much damage, I would say the deer is probably not feeling to well either.....

As far as repairs go....if you need all the parts you mentioned and there is no internal damage, I would guess your in the 7,000 - 8,000 range for the whole deal.....

Can't help you out with any aftermarket items....but I'm sure you will get a flood of posts to help ya out...

Hope all goes well....your car was looking so friggin hot with the new rims and all....GOOD LUCK

 

Sorry to hear that bro.......Damn.
Sounds like you found a good b/shop. They'll fix her up again for you.

 

Sorry to hear this....but at least you are ok....the car can be fixed.
I almost hit a deer a couple of weekends ago in the N GA Mountains.....on my VFR at about 50 mph! Barely missed him as he jumped accross the road.
Now that would hurt!

 

Yea I would agree with GR8 at roughly 5-8k depending upon the bodyshop and how much they wanna milk the insurance company too. Have them replace everything that is damaged with new parts, try for no bondo whatsoever. This is so weird cuz I was just reading the KP story the other day. I mean the amount of damaged G's I've seen on this site is something else. I mean I think quite a few members have had incidents with their G's. Well the main thing is that everyone makes it out okay and safe. The car will be fixed, it just sucks cuz I know you were still in the stage of admiring all the work you just got done doing to it.

-Vin

 

i think out G's are bad luck or something. like a magnet for accidents...

every week i come on the boards and there is always another car being hit or something.... wtf!!!!


my G is still at the body shop.. all i can say is i hate insurance companies.. i hate them with a passion... they take the longest time to fix something or approve to fix on something..

actually.. thinking about it.. i think its just my insurance compnay that sucks.. i cant wait to find a new one after all this mess is done..


goodluck with your ride man..

 

Thanks for the comments and kind words.

After "doing my homework" I found out some interesting information. Dealerships have several pricing structures. There is retail (the price saps like you and I pay), there is wholesale and then there are "body shop" rates. Body shop rates are the wholesale rate with an additional 20% discount.

The pricing structure breaks down like this (retail / 20% off wholesale)

New Hood: $434.14 / $315.74
Right/Left Head Lamp Assy: $853.51 / $620.74
Front Bumper Cover: $320.00 / $175.84
Front Grill: $211.53 / $153.84
Right/Left Fender: $286.55 / $208.40
Fender Protectors: (I call them wheel well black plastic things )
(Front set) $67.82 / $45.22
(Rear set) $32.50 / $20.00

This means that I *might* be able to swing an unpainted gilla style front grill for $180 incl. shipping and it would only cost me an additional ~$26.00 (and the paint would match 100% since the bumper and hood will be repainted at the same time). Just trying to look on the bright side of things.

Also, I'm itching to have this done BEFORE CHRISTMAS! I want to give the paint a couple of weeks to sit before I have the clear bra re-installed. Ideal situation would be for me to p/u the car before Christmas and have it sit in the garage for ~2 weeks. Then apply the C-bra on/around January 4th and go back to work the next day. Sounds too good to be true, so here's to hoping...

 

That sucks to hear about your car! Deer are so stupid!

What also sucks is with all the accidents I'm reading about, rates for the G35 will probably be going up =(

 

y00 i drifted into a curb and fuked up my passenger rear suspension nasty...infiniti wanted to charge me $8600...i bought the parts on carparts.com for $475...no lie. and i did the work myself. you do the math on how wack dealerships are. what i couldnt do like the install and reprograming of the airbags i had my mechanic do.

 

Sorry to hear that man...

I dodged a deer the other day as well... on the Freeway!! I missed it as I slammed on the brakes to slow down... only to run over a Squirrel about 1000 ft or so down. For you animal lovers out there.... sorry for the Squirrel...

Hope everything works out for ya!

Question: Why not go with aftermarket front bumper, upgraded hood, etc??

 

There is a good reason why people shoot at them!!

Animals are for eating, not for keeping as pets!

 

This was my initial intent, but after doing a little research... I'm not too fond of the mesh grills. I don't like being able to look into the G and see the hood latch, the radiator and all of the other "junk" that the stock grill hides. I DO LIKE the Top Secret Front Bumper, but it only looks good with a big fat intercooler. Unfortunately I couldn't sway the wife into believing that the only way I could get over killing Rudolph, and spoiling Christmas for all of the children of the world, was to go FI...

I think I bought this car for a reason. For me that reason was to keep the stealthy stock look, but to make it perform at a different level.

Here's to Kevin Pierson for selling me his slightly used Crawford Headers!!!

Sincerely,
"The Grinch"

 

man I hit a deer a while back too but I just cracked the paint on my bumper It was a little deer though that jumped infront of me during a canyon run doing like 50-60 mph.I still have the damage it sucks but it's not tooo noticeable so I'll fix it when I get my kit.

 

Neff,

Sorry to hear about the car and good job on the headers. I want a set soon too! Just bought the gialla grill, and love it...early Xmas gift from the wife. Let us know how the repairs turn out. I guess my wife won't fall for the "I hit a deer so now I need a twin-turbo-intercooler setup" line either.

 

I was on road trip from Little Rock to Savannah about 3 weeks ago. About an hour outside of Savannah, 12:30am @ almost 80mph, I just saw a flash in front of me. The deer there are pretty small. I couldnt even really see it above the hood, all I saw was a flash of it as it *barely* cleared the bumper. Scared the hell out of me. Slowed way down of course. Almost needed a change of undies on that one.