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Re: Weather Damage

To: jaltman@altlaw.com
Subject: Re: Weather Damage
From: "Robert M. Lang" <lang@isis.mit.edu>
Date: Wed, 01 Jul 1998 12:37:02 -0400
Cc: triumphs@Autox.Team.Net
Hi,

Sorry to hear about your encounter with a tree. Hopefully, Mr. Insurance
will be reasonable... whatever that means.

You mentioned the "car with the tree growing through it". I've actually seen
this. However, last year I had an opportunity to see a car that had been in
a barn when it collapsed!

Up here in the Great North, we have some interesting forces working on
things man-made. So, in the case of this car, the barn had had a visit by
some sort of wood devouring insects. That's no so uncommon in our parts -
although not nearly as common as you folks probably have down in Hot-lanta.
But then we have copious amounts of frozen precipitation from time to time.
In this case, the form was wet heavy snow.

Boom. Down comes the ol' bahn. Spelling misteak intended.

So any way, a buddy asks me to check out this car with him. I pull up to the
sellers house - the car looks okay from 50 feet. Passes the first test. I
get out of my car and walk over and see ONE INCH GAPS on BOTH SIDES of the
"bonnet". $#!^, I exclaim - what the &$@$ happened to the car. "Oh," said
the owner, "it was in a barn and the barn collapsed." Matter of factly, I
might add.

So, no doubt he bought the car as an insurance salvage car.

Then he spent a lot of money - nice new BRG paint, new interior, new rugs,
PLATE STEEL WELDED to the TRAILING ARM CROSS MEMBERS, new carpet GLUED to
the floor.

RUN AWAY!!!

Anyway, the odometer said 44k miles. So me and my buddy took it for a ride.
Ran really nicely. Everything was tight, no wierd sounds, pulled from 1000
RPMs in 4th... a good driver. So we discussed the price and made the guy an
offer of around $1500 under the asking price. The guy choked. Literally.

I'll be the car never sold.

It would have been a good driver, but it would have needed at least a couple
of thousand bucks worth of labor to get the fender/bonnet line "correct" and
to repaint. Why don't people think about this stuff when they "fix" a car??

Oh well. Rant over.

Hope your car is okay.

See ya,
rml
Bob Lang
TR6's


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