Project: The Sky's The Limit

[BFisch06]

Before leaving Harrisonburg I made sure to snap this pic:


So moving back to Roanoke has been great but the real world has left me little time to do much with the Sky . I've been to several autocrosses, where it has become painfully obvious I have no idea how to drive a RWD car. hock: Oh well, gotta start sometime and gotta start somewhere.




Then came August - the first day of August to be exact. Work takes me to a customer's manufacturing facility 75 minutes outside of Roanoke every Tuesday and Thursday, and we rotate who's driving to the plant. Sometimes there are 2 of us (my boss drives a Mazdaspeed Miata) and other times there are 3 of us (we take a Toyota Avalon with blown rear shocks), but more often than not, the Sky gets left at a small mall in town. We leave at 6:45 and get back at 6:30. The long days are a pain in the rear, but we don't have to spend the night out of town. Well, we got back a little late, I put my stuff in the car, put the top down, let the engine come to operating temperature, backed out of my space and started to leave the parking lot. I had driven 8 or 10 spaces up the lot when an Explorer backed into me. In hindsight, I have no idea why I stopped and hit the horn, but that's what happened. Kid got out of the SUV and I jumped over my (now jammed) driver's door. I was not a happy camper :evil: but when I saw he only had one arm I changed my mood. [No kidding: the kid had no left arm from the elbow down. I never got around to asking why.] He was very apologetic and explained he was leaving for college (in South Caroline) the next morning. I just told him it could have been a lot worse and that an ambulance wasn't on the way. His dad saw it happen (walking to his own car) so there was no fuss about who was at fault. I got his insurance information and drove it home after thoroughly looking over the impact area.




All kinds of damage to the Ford:


As it goes, I got an estimate, met with the adjuster, etc. The car should be out of the shop by Tuesday to the tune of just over $4,000. New rear fender and door (and associated parts), plus paint matching on the front fender, hood, rear decklid, and rear fascia. I decided to go ahead and have the front passenger fender replaced [Recall it was busted when I bought it] while it was in the shop, and that'll run me about $1000. For those wondering I chose Euro Specialty in Roanoke to do the repairs. Good, bad, or otherwise, that's where the work has been done. I have a Chevy Cruze 1LT as a rental, and while it's a nice car, it has 8 (eight!) more than HALF the horsepower of the Sky, crappy tires on it, and the MacPhersons are set to "ride like a Buick that's driving on a cloud". The sheer lack of feedback coming into the steering wheel has almost earned me a ticket. It's a nice little car - and far superior to the Cobalt that it replaced, but I'm ready to get the Sky back. It's been two weeks. The wife has been nice enough to let me drive the HHR on several occasions, but I think that's just made the Cruze experience worse.

I'll get the car back right after they're done putting it all back together, at which point I get to take it back apart, as these were awaiting my arrival Friday evening:


Stay tuned for a post on what's in the boxes! :mrgreen: