PARTS! a heads up

[valman]

hi guys, im afraid to say it but down to my stupidity i ended up with this as of monday morning:

i feel awful for being the one to break this car, but after the accident i can see that all the corrosion repairs were complete bodges, the front sills for example were just packed out with tinfoil then had new panels welded OVER the old ones, so although what i thought was a relatively solid car, turns out it wasnt.
the car is being picked up by a car disposal company on saturday morning and im going to start stripping bits off it. SO if you need something, reply in this thread and ill add the bits people are after on top of my current list and i can send them to you for a very reasonable price, as i feel i should give back to the community after breaking a car down to my own fault (i need to gather funds for another now)
if you are after the struts, i can tell you now they are still very much straight and will provide a decent lowering to your v300. bigger bits i would prefer collection on but anything smaller i am willing to post.
cheers

[jon-ovlov]

MOTHER OF GOD!!!! Glad your ok lad (at least you seem to be)!! That's one hell of a mash up.

Since you offered, if the struts are straight (if you can get them out), how much would you want them for, posted?

Such a shame to see dude, hope you recover ok!

[valman]

MOTHER OF GOD!!!! Glad your ok lad (at least you seem to be)!! That's one hell of a mash up.

Since you offered, if the struts are straight (if you can get them out), how much would you want them for, posted?

Such a shame to see dude, hope you recover ok!

yeah got out without a scratch luckaly, someone must like me up there
ill get the struts out and double check they are straight then i will get an estimate on postage for you, i only want 30 odd quid for the pair plus postage (provided they are straight - 90% sure they are), is that reasonable? if youre looking at doing a coilover conversion i've actually got a pair of struts from a 1.7 but the spring cups have collapsed on them, which is handy if youre going the coilover route as it saves you cutting them off haha. do you want the springs aswell?

[jon-ovlov]

Glad to hear! Yeah coil-overs is what I'm going to use them for. £30 posted sounds fine, provided the cups haven't eaten into the strut towers. I don't need the springs though lad, tah.

[valman]

pm'd you jon

[Alanovich]

Hi valman,

Very glad to hear you got out of ths one OK. Brilliant news.

Out of interest, would you mind telling us what you hit (or what hit you) and at what kind of speed? I'm interested as it'd be good to know what sort of accidents a 300 can withstand, it gives some kind of standard against which to judge the model's crash worthiness against modern NCAP rated cars.

Just interested from a selfish point of view, please don't respond if you don't want to.

[valman]

thanks for the concern dude, means a lot
i hit this:

im guessing thats a 12 ton lorry? i was going 50mph and smashed it right in the corner head on. i am amazed how well the 340 did in this type of accident, as everyone else has said to me, i was lucky to be in a volvo and not in a corsa/polo/etc chavbox
obviously if i had a passenger, i would probably be in a lot of trouble, as their head would have got awfully close to the a pillar. then again if i did have a passenger i wouldnt be driving like a total muppet and this probably wouldn't have happened.
overall, i honestly think that this is the safest car 300 quid can buy you as i've seen crash footage of saxos etc at 30mph into a stationary object and it is a lot LOT worse

so, if oyu have a youngun thats about to start driving, get them one of these

[jon-ovlov]

Jesus. You are lucky. Barely any damge to the lorry it would seem. For a 50mph crash, the safety cage on the volvo is more or less intact. Like you said, I reckon a corsa or something similar would have ended up being a lot worse.

[valman]

Jesus. You are lucky. Barely any damge to the lorry it would seem. For a 50mph crash, the safety cage on the volvo is more or less intact. Like you said, I reckon a corsa or something similar would have ended up being a lot worse.

i wish it was the case, the guys recovering the lorry said theres about 6 grands of damage, as the bumpers and the side steps are almost 2k on their own and thats without paint. man i am not looking forward to next year's renewal definitely a lesson for me not to drive like a loonatic from now on and certainly anyone else that likes to test the limit of their cars on public roads - keep it to the track.

[jon-ovlov]

Yup. You've learned the hard way. At least you don't have to fork out 6k yourself! Insurance, a good thing!!

[jtbo]

Yup. You've learned the hard way. At least you don't have to fork out 6k yourself! Insurance, a good thing!!

Actually, I believe his insurance quotes will be so much more now that he is actually paying for it in coming years

Learning hard way is better than not learning at all, you know what I have written, now you know it first hand

Really glad to hear you or anyone else got hurt, also it is way to find out car was not quite what it should of been, imagine what it would have been in same accident few years later as rot has been progressed, so very lucky.

[macplaxton]

Firstly, glad you're okay and that you've learnt now not to drive like a bell-end.

so, if you have a youngun thats about to start driving, get them one of these

Er, I rather they didn't, as they're fast disappearing as they are.

Still good to know that after nearly 25 years, they are still (to flip the ad phrase) "tested by the intelligent, driven by dummies"

[valman]

Firstly, glad you're okay and that you've learnt now not to drive like a bell-end.

so, if you have a youngun thats about to start driving, get them one of these

Er, I rather they didn't, as they're fast disappearing as they are.

Still good to know that after nearly 25 years, they are still (to flip the ad phrase) "tested by the intelligent, driven by dummies"

i was saying that from a safety point of view, not to say these are "gr8 4 raggin bwt in"
but totally agree with you on the advert slogan, my fault, so i shall take the abuse

[Hell Driver]

Jesus Christ! Looks like the car was pushed down under the trucks' chassis. Thats the worst state I've seen a 340 in after an accident. A car with less bonnet and you'd have been toast. Passenger compartment generally survived well, although a front seat passenger would have needed a change of trousers!

Thank god you got a glancing blow and not a total head on.

[Alanovich]

You're lucky you missed that signpost, too, valman. I managed to hit one (well, a lamp post, but same difference) with an MG Metro which aquaplaned once. Ripped off the fuel cap and sent me rolling down an embankment. Windscreen popped out when the roof hit the deck on the first roll and I started getting covered in petrol. As it was raining heavily though (hence the aquaplane), there was no spark to ignite me. Nearest I have ever come to death. Without a seat belt on I'd have been beetroot soup.