rjwoerheide

A rock the size of gibraltar came out of nowhere this morning and hit off my Corvette while I was on the highway (65 mph). I am SICK about this. I baby the sh*t out of this car, like most of us do, and it's only a year old and my first Vette. I barely drive it (2,880 miles in 13 months). I haven't driven it in a week and decided to since it's Friday. 16 years of driving and I've never had an object this large hit me.

Anyway, do you guys think this can be repaired good-as-new? It went clear through down to the base coat. I've attached photos taken with my cellphone (not the best quality). It hit the door twice and bounced off the side view mirror. I'm worried about color matching and swirl marks after a repair. Until this morning my baby was in pristine condition

Also, anybody have recommendations for a body shop within an hour radius of St. Louis, MO?

Sad,
-Rob

Ratchet Thunderbolt

Sorry about the car! Don't know of any shops in your area. I'm sure they will be able to take care of it no problem. Just be glad it wasn't your windshield.

Wayne O

Sorry about the damage. As suggested take it to a quality body shop and see what they say. I'm guessing it'll be an easy fix.

Asteroids? On rare occasion I've had rocks come out of seemingly no where and hit my car. I always thought it was aliens.

Assuming the object wasn't large enough to penetrate the glass and kill you, it might have been better if if hit the windshield. Replacing the glass is easy and you don't have to worry about matching paint. Besides, I imagine most people carry full glass coverage so there's nothing out-of-pocket to fix it.

stlc6vr

Performance Auto Body in Imperial MO. Talk to the owner Rob, he does very nice work and will be able to match it with no problem. I highly recommend his work. PM me if you need his number or any other questions.

Bob

willemory

Tough break man. I can't tell from the pictures, but maybe the door scratches could be wetsanded instead of paint? I'm not painter/detailer though, so I don't really know.

The big scratch on the mirror might be relatively cheap since it's such a small area on the car.

rjwoerheide

Thanks for the advice, guys. Keep it coming. Bob, I'll check out Performance Autobody in Imperial. Thanks for the tip. Color matching was my biggest worry so it's good to hear you guys think it'll be an easy fix.

Yeah, I was actually wishing it had hit my windshield. Glass is glass, but paint ... harder to get perfect.

Two weeks until the FunFest too. Hopefully I'll have her fixed by then, but that's pretty soon.

ron-z51

It can easily be fixed by a reputable repair shop. Find a reputable dent and ding repair company, if you know your dealership fairly well ask who they use to repair thier damages. One of my best friends has his own company fixing just such road rash. He mostly does new cars for dealerships, cars that have transport damage etc

Anyway, a good quality repair place will be able to smooth it out, spot paint with a perfect match and re-melt the clear. Note, I say a reputable good place, shop around and ask for some references first. It can either be fixed perfectly or get a bad shop and be made into a real mess

Land Jet

That sucks bro. Next time you hit the road check out www.nasa.gov for the latest asteroid predictions!

KarlK

That sux, I had a similar incident a within a couple of weeks of my C6 ownership.

ChopShop1

Not sure if anyone else has said it yet, but I am in the insurance business, and a "falling object" would be covered and not cause any negative affects on your policy. I would check with your insurance carrier and inform them that something came out of the sky, and you were not able to locate exactly where it came from(if this is the case, as you never want to lie to the ins co. consequences can be huge). See if they will cover the loss that way. Good luck

RICH 28

Look at this rock hit http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap021118.html

LIVetteFan

P.S. Technically you couldn't have been hit by and asteroid unless you were flying through space - it would have bee a meteoroid. Anyway though that stinks.

holdin5aces

Hard to take when it happens, easy to fix. We've had three repairs to the rear fascia from rear enders. Monterey Red so it is a tint coat as well. Matched perfectly. Used to be paint match was a huge issue. Not so much with today's materials and techniques.

07c6vette

sorry for the misfortune..i had the same problem, got hit on the hood, luckily it was in the edge of the hood and not in the center, so it wasn't too obvious..tried different types of paint chip like langka and other expensive paint repair but turned out the stock touch up paint woked the best. it took a while for me to get over and accept it. as far as having the whole hood repainted (costs money), chances are it may get hit again. hard to prevent that from happening, so just went ahead and just touch it up.

ALVetteFan

Sorry to hear about that. I hope your repairs go well.

Gearhead Jim

Not to be sarcastic, but my technique is to drive the car a lot and look at the inevitable dings as "character", each one has a story.

You should be able to get 200k miles out of your engine before a rebuild, get going!

Vetteinplano

Ditto.

Sounds like you should park in a garage and put a car cover on it.



Get in it, drive it, have fun with it, fix what gets broken, drive it some more!

quickc6

You can't enjoy the car if it sits in the garage . Also , how
does one rock hit your car three times . It does suck when you get
deng and scratches .

LTC Z06

That's why you drive them, because it doesn't matter what you do, so enjoy the car.

cclive

I was going to ask how one rock hits the mirror and then detours down to the door, or was it a bunch of them, like from a gravel truck?