Accidents

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Accidents

Accidents are bad. Try not to let them happen. Here are accidents that happened to my car. Read the stories and don't be stupid like I did.

First accident

I got my first accident on this car on 7/18/00. It costs me $809 to repair. I ran into another guy's rear at a stop sign near my place.

The story

This is how it happened. This guy was in a Ford station wagon something I don't know. He stopped at this 1-way stop sign and I was behind him. After he took off I then moved up the stop sign getting ready to take my turn. Since it was a 1-way stop sign, so I didn't think about looking anywhere else besides the oncoming traffic from the left, WHICH WAS MY BAD. I finally found a chance to take off, so I did. Guess what? The Ford guy was still there! When I looked back it was too soon for me to stomp the brake because I was almost fully floor the gas to take off. Bang! I hit his rear. When I talked to him he said a car cut in front of him so he had to stay there. But that was a little bit to the right and quite a bit behind the stop line so I didn't notice that he was still there. He didn't feel confident enough to take off at the time I was taking off so I paid my price of being stupid and being TOO confident, may be.

Actually the Ford guy was my friend so we just took off after the accident and had dinner together later on that evening. He didn't want to repair his bumper, which had only a few scratches so that was lucky of me. Anyway my front bumper was trashed and the passenger side turning light was broken so I had to fix it. I almost cried when this happened to my beloved SS. I decided not to call the insurance because the repair cost was a little bit above the deductible. If I did have the insurance pay for the difference, I'd have to pay them back later in the premium anyway.

Ok. Enough said about this accident. It is over and I want to forget it. Although I said it was the First Accident, I don't want any more accidents. I swear after this I'll look much more carefully at ANY stop signs. So as a good warning to you as well, please drive responsively and do not drink and drive!

Second accident

My second accident was on 3/6/01. I put in a wrong gear and stepped on a wrong pedal and hit the rear of the car in front of me at a stop light. I was stupid. I wasn't drunk or what so ever, just being stupid.

The story

This accident happened right after my car stereo was stolen. Since there was a big hole in the top, I didn't want to drive the car around that much so a friend of mine let me use his 91 Accord while my car was waiting to be repaired. One drawback was that I got used to the Accord and became a little unfameliar with the Camaro.

That night, the sky was clear with a nice warmer temperature. After I hadn't driven the car for 2 weeks, I decided to take my car for a ride when I went for dinner regardless of the hole in the top. After dinner, I took off and left the to-go box on the passenger seat. At the stop light, the box rolled over and fell down to the passenger side kick panel. I was alone in the car so I had to bend down to pick it up. Before bending down, I put the car in Neutral and pulled the parking brake. Then I bent down. For some reason, my feet stepped on the brake pedal while I was struggling for the box. So that should be ok. Unfortunately, it was not. It was the gas pedal I was stepping on. The car pulled forward and hit the car in the front! Now you may have wondered how the hell the car moved since I put it in Neutral. Well, it was my stupidity again that the car was not in N but in OD. I put the car from D to OD, not OD to N before I pulled the e-brake. Got it?

All I can say is I was very stupid, no other excuse. The old lady was nice and accepted my appology. No one was hurt because everything happened during both cars being stopped. The Allero wasn't damaged much, just some scratches on the rear bumper, but I totalled my front bumper. (Well, you can see that the F-bodies are very well built compared to others.) It costed me over a thousand to repair so I let the insurance take care of it. They might be pissed about that because I just claimed for the stolen stereo a couple weeks ago. Oh well, I can't help it. Shit happens and I don't want it either.

3rd accident

I'm not the bad guy this time. I was parked at a restaurant. A guy backed into my rear bumper on the side. Since the damage was not too bad, just some scratches, and the guy appeared to be a husband of someone I know, so I let it slip this time.

Stolen stereo

Alpine CDA-D855
Arc Audio 4050-CXL
Rockford Fosgate Punch 360a2

Service Nightmare

This is the first time I have to take the car to service. The car had some grinding from the rear end and the seal on the U-joint was leaking. This first service turned out to be a nightmare for me although I already thougth at first that this was going to be difficult because of the upgraded suspension. This was at Bill Heard Chevrolet, the place I bought this car. The service guy turned to be the sellman who sold me this car. He is a car guy and he's cool about my upgraded parts. However, after the mechanics took a look at my rear end, they had to examine the ring and pinion carefully. Here's what they found.

They found the ring gear to be a non-GM part. Worse than that, it's not 3.23 gear ratio as supposed to be on the A4 SS! They said the gear is 3.42 and accused me of putting aftermarket rear end gear in. They assumed that according to other aftermarket parts on my car.

I could not believe what I heard. It doesn't make sense at all why I should put 3.42 ring gear in there. Let's analyze this a little. First of all, 3.42 would not give me significant gain from 3.23. In other word, it's not worth time and money putting it in. Second, this is my daily driver, I wouldn't put higher gear ratio in my A4 to hurt the gas milege. Third, if I really put it in, I wouldn't dare taking the car to the dealer to have my blood sucked at the first place because the consequence is well known already. A friend of mine would fix that for $200 instead of $480 I paid.

I explained this to the service manager. He called SLP and GM to check what was going on. None of them knew what happened. The car was left unassembled for almost a week. I had to be out of town and needed the car real bad. So I paid for it and learned a lesson hard way. GM quality control sucks! What would happen if this is not a Camaro and the car is driven by an average Joe? It's not fair for a customer at all that GM provide low quality QC and put the cost on the customer.

If I have time, I'll pursue this to see what I can get out of them.

4th accident

Can't remember the date on this one but it was sometime back in 2001. I went into a grocery store to get something for dinner. I came back and found the right tail light cracked, exposing the bulb inside. I couldn't find who did it since there was no one around at the time. Luckily, there was nothing else damaged, only the tail light. I ended up buying a used part to replace the damaged one.