Pull apart your car now and hang onto everything you can. Once it's gone you have space for a roller. Anyone paying 10k for a roller is getting ripped off. Assuming you're supplying all the parts to swap the drivetrain swap labor should be under $2k. As for getting the roller just have a shipping company handle it and have it sent to the shop swapping the drivetrain if you don't have a truck, or just get a uhaul truck and trailer.

 

Isn't that the best kind?

 

it really would depend on the roller itself. is it a full bodied roller? or is it missing hood and bumper, which is like 75% of my cost in parts at this point?

lets say it's missing those parts, which seems common based on the rollers i've seen. then it's still 3k for the parts, not to mention headlights, which also aren't typically included with roller, as far as i've seen.

then it boils down to option a) labor of work to fix my car vs option b) labor of swap plus buying & dumping one chassis. plus still some painting will be required on the roller depending on what bits i find. the rest of the costs, assuming i need parts for hood and bumper etc. are the same be it fix chassis or swap to roller.

show me a clean roller full bodied, either white rs or MR since i've got the al roof here too, and then i'll start punching in actual estimates lol

again my current breakdown:

• parts - 3.7k, (mainly bumper, lip, hood, fenders, rear qp. the cost for some of the support rail stuff is actually very minimal) - let's say 4k even to add whatever odds and ends
  • same or maybe 500 less for the roller, depending on the status of it
• headlights - whatever it costs used
  • same for roller, depending on status of roller
• labor - 2k quoted, up to possibly 4-5k, depending on how much straightening - unlikely given everything is still intact, drove straight home 5 hours, doesn't pull to one side, etc
• paint labor - 1.5k
  • same or maybe 500 less for roller, depending on the bits collected. if needing bumper & hood, will nearly be the same
• paint supplies - $800
  • same for roller, depending on status of roller per above

point being, to compare apples to apples, we're looking at 2-5k, hopefully on the lower end, to fix the chassis, vs buying roller, labor for swapping parts, and selling old roller. also keep in mind - looking to get back to OEM body per the series want to race in

not to mention, STL is not the hotspot when it comes to performance evos and shops familiar with the car, lol

 

I agree with biggie and ayoustin. You have the internet so plenty of time to look for rollers while out n about. And you find somebody to handle the whole thing. A wrecker would buy what u dont keep as spares off your car


Also came across this guy on facebook that may be of interest

 

The roller idea is simply stupid. Sorry. His car is not that wrecked. If he had stuffed it at 60 and both sides were tore up and the motor fell out of it, maybe. But just no.

 

The roller thing on paper sounds more ideal, but as stated, you are talking about two cars now instead of one. I can almost guarantee that no shop will likely store two cars or want to deal with a hassle such as this. You are talking about extra space that would potentially be taken up that they could have another customer's car in there. It all sounds simple, but almost 100% of the time, nothing goes the way it should and once that starts happening, the costs start going up and up. It's a hell of a lot simpler on paper than it is actually doing. Fixing the wrecked car could also have benefits as well. The chassis can be repaired to better than new if taken the time to do so. It is also a hell of a gamble to buy a roller, whether it looks spotless or not. It could also have gremlins and 99% of the time, rollers are rollers for a reason whether blown motors, wrecked, drivetrain issues, the list goes on and on. It is much safer to deal with what he already has and not buying another potential headache.

 

His car would 100% be a total loss if he was trying to go through insurance. It is literally a wreck. Unibodies are made to crumple, you cant make any kind of real evaluation from pictures over the interwebs.

 

tough words to hear, lol

 

Most rollers have all the body panels so to say it will need paint and extra parts is just dumb. Have you even looked around much for rollers? I see like 2-3 solid rollers for sale every month.

Insurance likely wouldn't even send an adjuster if this happened on the street. They'd total that off pictures alone. You need to remember that the bodyshop quote you've gotten is a best case scenario. I've literally never paid lower than the quote given to me and it's rare that the original quote is end cost. If any of the metal underneath the fender panels is bent you're going to rack up even more labor. Labor can VERY quickly spiral when it comes to bodywork

 

Sorry dude, I didn't mean to be so blunt/harsh. I've worked with a lot of adjusters and body shops and seen a bunch of **** and that's just what I think.

Nobody really believes their car is totaled (unless its a crumpled ball), but the insurance companies are soulless money making machines.

 

yea, it's a function of how the insurance & the shops work - auto body shops have incentive to charge as much as possible

 

Lol insurance totaled my last miata for needing a hood, one fender, a headlight, bumper after hitting a deer. The adjuster literally took 30 seconds after he found out NB1s were only made for 2 years and there's no aftermarket body panels. Only consolation was they actually paid me what I could have sold it for pre accident.

 

How would track insurance work on something like this if the car was insured for, say, $30k? Would they cut a check for $30k, less the 10% deductible, and call it a day? Or pay the $12-15k repair costs, less the deductible?

 

That's also because it was Miata, so it worth about $7 and some dryer lint.

I'm not talking about insurance. I'm talking about the cost to fix his car vs the monumental headache and very likely even higher cost that the roller option WILL be.

 

I'm sensing a lot of hard thinking in this thread over a race car that will likely end up in the wall again. No offense OP, but it's a track car now so don't spend any more time or money than you have to.

I would start with what you CAN do. Remove the fenders and the hood and set them aside. They are just 10mm and 12mm bolts. The A pillars are likely straight since the windshield isn't cracked.

5mm of frame rail deflection is not bad and can be bent back out while still preserving close to stock rigidity by a frame bender shop. Have them do ONLY that for you. You'll save a lot of money if you just bolt on CF fenders and a hood since they don't need paint. To hell with perfect body gap lines. As for the rear quarter panel, a collision center or body shop will need to cut it off and weld on a new sheet of metal. That's what happened to me when someone rear ended me years ago.

If the subframe is unbent and it bolts up to the unibody, the car can still get a good alignment and the diffs will be fine. So the only damage I saw was: passenger quarter, an axle, front bumper, driver headlight, driver fender, and hood. Did i miss something like an axle getting pushed into something and breaking it? This accident really doesn't look like a big deal.