So I had a shitty Saturday.
I started working on my old blue Mazda on Saturday after it sitting with the cab full of Rock Auto boxes for a couple of months. I got the front end mostly pulled apart but then encountered an axle nut that I didn’t expect. It wasn’t a nut but one with recesses in meant for a special tool to remove (think like adjusting a shock). When I’ve seen these before I’ve been able to use a drift to remove them but this one was recessed into the hub too far to be able to do that.
I made a tool run to O’reillys to see if they had anything I could rent that could accomplish this and came up short. Next was to head to Harbor Freight to see if I could find something useful in their shelves.
While pulling away from a stop light as the third car back we got almost up to speed and the first car decided to make an immediate left turn instead of at the light like a sane person. They stopped abruptly to make that turn and the car in front of me (CX9) stopped just barely in time to avoid rear ending the truck but I was not able to...
And yes that is antifreeze on the ground...
Insurance adjuster at first sight thought it was totaled. My firs thought was that it was right on the line. She ran through the visible numbers though and it came up at $6500 of damage just this side of totaled since it is a pretty desirable car (TDI, sunroof and so on) and was in good shape and she marked the value at ~11k. She also expected to find more damage as the shop started to take it apart so it could still go either way.
I know modern cars are designed to crumple, but this seems extreme. I was probably going 10 and decelerating quickly when I hit her.
I had this car almost a year and have loved it. Fuckity Fuck!
CX9 I hit that looks virtually unscathed other than a banged up bumper cover and a VW logo imprint in it.
I did get it to the shop on Saturday and they looked at it on Monday as the nasty storm was hitting St Louis so at least I’m at the front of the list for a busy as hell time for the body shop and insurance company.