[IroncladFool597]

Recently bought a cruze 94,000 miles 6 speed pretty nice looking car and then 2 weeks having the car a deer jumps out on my way to work. Insurance wants to total the car and only give half of what its worth (which is pretty normal). So im thinking instead of being stuck with a high balance left and no car, im going to use what they give for the value of the car and fix it up the way i wanted it to be. The damage estimate came back at around $7,600 give or take and they'll only be giving around $4,700, but lucky for me a lot of the custom aftermarket parts i was going to put on there eventually actually come out to be cheaper than the oem parts I would have been forced to have on there if via. Body shop. (Carbon fiber hood, full body kit, headlights, tailights) all will make it look 10x better IMO. Im going to have to do the work myself in between working overtime so that'll be fun.

I would like some advice on the best way to repair the dent in the roof from the hood slamming up (sorry no picture), i really dont want to have a big layer of bondo or have to cut it out and weld in a new one but i see those being my only options.

 

[chevrasaki]

Welcome to the forum!

That is a major bummer. If I were you, I wouldn't sink any money into that vehicle. Modern vehicles are designed to destroy themselves to absorb impact, and that impact looks like a big one. If you can't get the insurance company to pay you at least what you owe on the car, (try mentioning contacting your attorney when you're on the phone), then you may better off taking payment, and purchasing the car back from the insurance company for a couple hundred then parting the car out and selling it to a scrap yard. Insurance companies have a bad habit of trying to profit off claims by doing exactly that. Paying the owner less than it's worth, then doubling what they paid out by parting the car so they actually make money when you report a total loss, then they jack your rates up.

Hope all this works out for you, but I really don't recommend trying to fix it unless you're a professional body shop guy already and you really like to do that kind of thing.

 

[IroncladFool597]

I do like to do mechanical side of cars which is the majority of the damage is just the radiator, fan, and ac compressor the rest is simply cosmetic. And i do have a paint guy thatll do it for cheep more than likely. I wont be paying anything out of pocket for this by the way.