Trashed my door

B

barnflakes

New member
In a rush and stressing my nuts off, I reversed the side of my car into a concrete pillar in an underground carpark.

Door looks pretty messed up. Big dent(s), lots of scratches, even a slight hole. The doors seals also don't seem flush now with the bodywork, as you can see in the bottom right of the image: at high speeds I get horrendous wind noise.

Is this fixable? Any ideas on how much it'll cost and how I should go about it? Will it need a new door?

Should I go through insurance (will they let me claim when it's clearly my fault?).

Any ideas appreciated.

Pic here: http://www.tiikoni.com/tis/view/?id=f12deda
 
Good evening & welcome mr flakes , not the normal newbie pic but glad youve found us & joined up
My route would be to avoid even mentioning it to the insurance & set about sorting it yourself for around £350/£400 all done ? If you claim youl pay more than that in increased premiums over the coming years :oops:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BMW-Z4-E85-DRIVER-DOOR-IN-SILVER-/221688216695?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&fits=Car+Make%3ABMW|Model%3AZ4&hash=item339da5bc77
 
Ouch :cry:

I think before going through insurance I'd take it to a couple of repair centres for a quote.
If it's only the door you may be better buying one from a scrapper and getting it fitted and painted.

Insurance may write it off, if it was me I'd do a little groundwork first.

Good luck :thumbsup:
 
Oh dear, cheapest option is to get a second hand door in same colour and swap yourself, good luck :thumbsup:
 
Ouch- defo source a replacement door and paint it. Will only slightly more than your excess anyway. Welcome :thumbsup:
 
Thanks for the advice chaps.

Story was, 20 minute walk back to the car park in order to take my misses to the airport, running slightly late. Get to the car park and she realises she's lost the ticket. Then spent 20 minutes trying to find someone on a Sunday afternoon in a German car park and explain to him in German that we've lost the ticket. After all is said and done realised I have one hour to do a 1 hour 20 journey in order to get her to the airport in time (managed it - thank God for the German autobahns).

Hence, stressing my nuts off and in a rush. Tried to reverse out of the spot as quickly as possible looking over my shoulder to look for any cars driving past us through the car park, and forgot there was a big concrete pillar on the driver's side. Heard a crunch and realised I'd just mashed the car into the pillar. Wing mirror has some scratches but other than that seems OK. Door is not in a good state though, I think the pic actually makes it look better than it is.

She still refuses to take any responsibility for what happened :evil: First time any of my cars have made contact with anything in 12 years of driving so pretty peed off with myself. Even more annoying is that the car is only just two months old (well, it's 8 years but I've only had it for 2 months) and it didn't have a scratch on it when I bought it.

As a general guide, say I get a door that is not in the same colour (I assume it's quite tricky to get a 2007 drivers side Z4 door in Monaco Blue), how much would it cost to get that stripped down and put into the right colour?

And I don't think I'm capable of putting on a new door myself - what sort of labour charge am I looking at?

£400 as previously suggested seems on the light side...

As far getting it repaired as is - can they fix the slight hole that's developed in the middle of that scrape? It's about 2-3mm I would say.
 
Monaco blue is pretty rare, so think you will have to get a donor door resprayed.

Probably cheaper to do this and get a better result than having yours fixed.
 
Thanks for the advice guys.

So new door it is.

Any tips on:

a) Where I can get a new door.
b) Where I get this stripped down and repainted - will a normal garage do it?
 
barnflakes said:
a) Where I can get a new door.
Click to expand...
ebay is a good bet - Mr Wilks posted a link to a silver door

barnflakes said:
b) Where I get this stripped down and repainted - will a normal garage do it?
Click to expand...
Ask around to find a decent bodyshop in your area - work of mouth recommendation is best. Taxi drivers often know all the local ones that will do 'cash' deals (that's not to say they're the best, just that they'll do jobs for cash which can save a few shekels)
 
:thumbsdown:
sorry about the scrape
if you mention where you are in the uk you may get recommendations for good paint shops on here
unless you are still in Germany an the little flag below your name has thrown me
 
Well, in Germany they may want to claim against you to clean that post from all that blue paint that is on there now … :?
 
A bit complicated, I live in Germany + 2 places in the UK basically.

Anywhere near either Norwich or Kingston London would be great.

Spoke to the BMW Bodyshop in Norwich.

They reckon £500 for the spray of the door + fitting. Obviously I'd need £100 for the door too.

One thing they said is that with Monaco Blue it'll need to be blended. That turns it into a £2k job.

I can't justify that kind of price so I'm gonna have to risk it with just getting the door done.

Any advice on this?
 
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