Ever since I was about 8 years old, I have been a die hard Camaro fan. Nothing could ever top a Camaro. They are and always will be my favorite car. Since the day I fell in love with Camaro's, I had saved all of my chore money, my lawn mowing money, and birthday money, whatever money (you get the point), so I could purchase my own Camaro. Needless to say as I learned more and more about cars and mostly Camaros, i started to choose my favorite generations. 1st gen Camaros stole the show for me, no doubt. But, thirdgens, they caught my eye. Like they wanted to just rip up the asphalt and kick some ***. On June 3rd, 2011, about 21 days before my 16th birthday, after much patience and hard work, I finally bought my first Camaro, as my first car. a 1992 Camaro RS with a 305 V8 engine. It wasnt my ideal thridgen camaro, but no doubt was it love at first sight. Doors shut correctly, it didnt rattle and squeak, the engine ran as solid as an engine can, it was an all around perfect car. 5 grand laid down on the table, and the title was mine. I have taken care of this car better then i have taken care of anything. I honest to god love my Camaro, and would do anything to make sure it is running properly. I replaced struts, sway bar links, greased everything that needed to be greased, 2 new front brake calipers, 2 new rear wheel cylinders, brake shoes and brake pads, not the cheap ones either. New brake rotors, and new console lid to replace the cracked one, all new tires, new water pump and water neck gasket, resealed intake manifold gasket, deep cleaned the interior like no other, it looks brand new, AND the dash isnt cracked. The exterior i detail and keep clean no matter what, and with a paint job this car could look brand new. I cleaned the engine bay as best i could. All in all I probably have over 800 hours in this car making it run and look as best as it can. I even bought a nice flowmaster cat back system that is stainless steel and 3" ID with gorgeous polished tips. But of course, something always has to happen...

Tonight while I was at work it was storming outside which is no big deal. But at about 7:3o it sounded like a monster truck was rolling over the roof, and people came running inside the store. People were staring outside and were talking about golf ball sized hail. My eyes became as wide as quarters as i ran out from behind the customer service desk and looked outside. Sure enough, hail covered every inch of the parking lot. People looked at me and told me i looked like i was about to cry, truth is i was.
The first thing that came to my mind was if the t tops broke. As I ran outside after the hail calmed down, i checked the T tops and they were fine. The rest of the night until the store closed, my beloved camaro was on my mind. I raced that bitch home tires sliding back and forth the the slick concrete. I pulled into the garage and turned the car off. The sound of the engine still brought a smile to my face. But as I got out of the car, and looked at the fenders and the hood, I couldnt help but be filled with anger and sadness as tears rolled down my face. Hail dents covered my beloved camaro which prior to this night had a perfect exterior. For so long I had wanted my own Camaro, I got one and took care of it like my child, and in 10 miuntes it was ruined by hail. My car worth $8000 is now worth about $2000. I walked into my home and slammed the door behind me, throwing my keys at the wall leaving a gash in the drywall as tears kept streaming down my face. Just my luck I thought. "My Camaro of course has to be ruined because I take such good care of it, and it is damn near the only thing that matters to me." After sitting in my room for 20 minutes to calm down, i went back into my garage to inspect the damage. It indeed is covered with dents, the windshield lining is cracked also. Even as I type this out I am still overwhelmed with frustration and sadness. My dear Camaro may very well be totaled due to hail.

sucks to hear man i just bought a new 06 gt convertable $15,000 i live in lincoln we got hail to luckily just pea sized hail plus my 86 camaro that is almost ready for paint is locked away in my garage post up some pics, also do you have full coverage on her?

Sorry to hear that! Anxiety could have made it worse!! Drive safe!! I understand your frustration. I had a '54 Chevy truck with Ford 9in. rear & blueprinted tunnel ram small block. Ended up selling due to personal reasons. Got it my junior yr high school, 1982,
assembled the motor, loved it. Sold it in 2002.
Upset, I drove my daily driver like you described. Luckily nothing happened!!
Maybe you can get hood & fenders here or a u-pull-it. Get estimates for painless dent repair. May suprise yourself, maybe not, but IMO worth a shot!!
Post a pic of the damage?

Got pics of the damage? Went through something similar with my T/A last year. Had it covered and fortunately had a heavy quilt over the roof (slicktop) but the louvers and the hood have about 20 or so dime sized dents (side note to everyone: BEACH TOWELS DON'T OFFER GOOD HAIL PROTECTION! (ask me how I know...) If you daily drive your car watch the weather, consider getting a beater and parking under a carport or garage when it sucks out. If it's your only car, get some old quilts from Goodwill and cover every inch of it and top it off with a nice cheap waterproof car cover.. ), only noticeable when you're right up on the car and looking at the right angle. You got lucky since your car is a T-top, if they aren't cracked then you don't have much of a roof to be concerned about either. Hoods and fenders are cheap if you're not too concerned about originality; find a nice old timer that does good, cheap paint work and slap those on and it'll be good as new. If you do want to keep the car original, watch your area for paintless dent repair guys. They do fantastic work for a very reasonable cost without messing up your paint (this is the route I'll go when I have more cash this summer) and they tend to come out of the wood work after severe weather.

I wouldn't worry too much about the car's cash value. If insurance does total it out, just buy it back and put some new body parts on it or get the old ones PDR'd straight. The title will be branded rebuilt if you do this but if you have receipts or photos of the hail repair being done the right way (as opposed to bondo or any red neck home brew method) most people wouldn't care should you decide to part ways with the car down the road.

I know how you feel though... it's f*cking painful to see, but it doesn't affect drivability and it may be a chance to upgrade to a lightweight fiberglass hood! The fact that you mention the car being totalled leads me to believe that you have full coverage too... if that's true then you should be happy because if they do total it out and you can buy the car back and get the repairs done properly and cheap enough you can actually have a few bucks left over for more care, maintenance, mods, a beater, etc.

Man that really sucks. I saw some FB pics of those hail stones and they were awful!

I assume that since this car was your baby and you cherished it as much as you say, that you have full coverage insurance and a stack of your reciepts showing the money you have put into it. Start printing out every favorable value guides for your car, cause you would really want them to fix it. Hope the claims adjuster is a car guy and understands enough to help you get it repaired. I can only imagine the feeling watching you baby getting beat on, and nothing you can realistically do to stop it.

Sad story man, i wouldve felt the same way it that happened to my Camaro, hope everything works out

Buy it back and learn to body work and paint! It's an opportunity if you look at it right

I fix hail damage.....but that sounds a little to extreme to fix.....

Sorry about the car man, I'm sure it can be fixed, but for how much???. I say get an estimate and go from there. Let us know how it goes.

Hey man sucks to hear that.

My 91 z28 is my first car and I love the thing. Hail has always been one of my fears, especially after a few close calls.

Just try to find a positive outcome man. You should get some insurance money. Use that to get it all fixed up, possibly with a new paint job. Now's your chance to get a fiberglass hood if you want one. I would look at it as an overall opportunity to restore the exterior of the car to make it look as good as your interior.

Bad things happen, just try to find the good things in them!

Also to add to how shitty my week started, my girlfriend just broke up with me last night too 3 days before we were supposed to go to prom. I have already paid for everything too. So now I am broke, broken hearted, with a dented up Camaro. What a great ****ing week.

Sorry bro hope everything gets better for you

Wow that is a terrible nightmare for a camaro lover. Sorry to hear this, wish there was something I could do to help.

That sucks, dooood. Post some pictures of the damage. Replacing the fenders and hood can be done pretty cheap.

It'll get better dude... I mean you can only go up from here right? Sucks that it all had to happen at once, but cash and girls both come and go and **** happens to cars. Fortunately the car is definitely fixable and girls are easy to get in high school. Half the fun is in fixing the cars and getting the girls anyway, keeps things from getting boring.

Also, I've found that there's generally much more cash to work on your car when you're single... most of the mods in my sig happened when I wasn't burning through cash on the fairer sex.

Post some pics of the car so we can assess the damage and recommend the best/ cheapest route to fix it.

Wow, I've had some bad weeks but that may top some.
About the female problem, I will say there are more fish in the sea, not always better, not always worse but different and more of them. Be the better person and go anyway, with or without her.

I honestly wouldn't worry 2 much about the exterior just yet, it will get worked out. Find out what INS may help with 1st.(my cuz is a INS agent in your city and his phone was ringing as it was happening)
While your waiting for warmer temps, learn/research how people have used dry ice on these types of dents while it sits out in the sun on a summer day. (it works well)

And never, ever throw/hit things because your mad. Learn to control that now or it could haunt you some day.
Good luck with it all.

Answer? Comprehensive coverage with an agreed value policy. No insurance company I know of values an commonly built thirdgen that high. Only the specialty models get the high actual cash values.

I'd say you could go through insurance if you had full coverage, but they will likely value the car below the cost to fix it, and would total the car out if you pursued it.

Get a written estimate from a shop, compare the actual cash value.

INS companies typically total cars out if the cost of repair is 65-75% of the actual cash value. It swings a bit either way based on how easily the car is replaced. Rare cars they will cover more damage on before declaring it a loss.

So an update to anyone who cares.

My friend Nate told me his dad owned a body shop. I took it in to him and had him look at it. He told me he could replace the hood, fix the fenders, fix the roof behind the t tops, replace the bar between the t tops, and maybe fix the door for around 3100. This includes a new windshield and he's going to buff my whole car for me. I cannot thank him enough for helping me out with my baby, it really kind of gets to the emotions I claim I don't have. I love my car so much and am so grateful that he is going to fix it for so cheap when other shops were quoting me 6g's+, for not even as much repair as he is doing. Along with the body getting fixed he is trying to get me some new headliner also since mine is a little bit deteriorated. I cannot thank him enough, and aside from paying him for the work I wish there was something more I could do. Thank you so much Nate and Brian for fixing my car.

Along with that I'm also just about done refinishing my IROC wheels I bought after the bitch broke up with me. I took the money I got from returning my tux and bought some gold IROC Z wheels, took the opportunity and learned how to turn gold deteriorated IROC wheels to black fresh shiny IROC wheels. Ill put up a couple pics. Thanks for reading.

AAAAAAAAAND still not a single picture...

LOL

I was going to post something to this effect.

No big deal, it's just an RS. Come on, come on, was I the only one thinking it...?

You are a raging douche. Plain and simple.

To the OP, I bought my camaro 5 years ago back in 08. I had the same love affair with it as you do now. It was the first car I ever owned and bought with my own money working part time hours at a pizza parlor. I got it for $1200.

However, as time went on, it started giving me problems left and right. I ended up wrecking it and even though it wasn't anywhere near totaled, mechanically speaking it ended up breaking down and sat for almost a year. I refused to get rid of it and bought another car until the time was right.

I started restoring it both mechanically and cosmetically in 2011. Here is what it looked like when I started:

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/atta...227_174032.jpg

Here she is today, almost $20k later:

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/atta...215_111145.jpg

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/atta...215_114808.jpg

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/atta...215_152153.jpg

As long as the frame isn't trashed it's never over. And since your car is mechanically sound, there's half your battle.

And don't listen to the guy with the RS comment. That's straight up r1cer talk.

Good to hear its turning around for you bro

sucks about the hail damage. glad to hear it's getting taken care of.
don't worry about the ex-gf though, she was a douche anyways

It may just be an RS.. But it's my RS, that me a 17 year old kid who just graduated from high school bought his junior year, and I can promise you when I'm done with it, it might not be as fast as your big fancy Z28, but at a car show, people will be looking at my car. Not yours. A true Camaro fan can appreciate every model, so get the **** out.

I'm 17. Bought mine with my own money. Managed to not let it get hailed on. Tell me EXACTLY why they will be looking at your car. See, I know yours is banged up and you don't know what mine looks like. Don't make a statement out of ignorance.

I'm confused where you come of telling him "don't make a statement out of ignorance" when that's exactly what you did to start with.

Hail isn't anything you can prevent or plan for. so you're telling us you can control the weather? Can you make it never rain here again so I don't have to wash my car on a weekly basis? Also, the pollen count is rather high here at the moment and that's a problem for the owner of a black car. Would you mind doing something about that as well?

And it doesn't matter if it's an RS. It's still his car he cares about. I own a Z, but do you see me making arrogant statements? I can easily tell that you bought your car exactly as is and have not bothered putting any TLC into it. Just FYI, I don't have to look at your car to tell you mine is fresher, since you wanted to steer the conversation in that direction. See how much of an asshat I seem saying that? What's next? You trying to rag on me and OP's car for having a 305?

It's people like you that take the fun out of the sport for the rest of us. Do everyone a favor and hop off this thread with your immature disrespect. Only 17 huh? Yeah, there's no doubt about that.

Yeah , yeah you are the only one who was thinking that.
it's this type of attitude that knocks the fun out of it all..... the "my car is better than yours" attitude. IF you have nothing worthwhile to contribute, move on man.

I never said my car kicks his ***. His RS could look nicer and be faster than an 82 Z28. RS is just usually considered the less desirable car among the Camaro models and I was playing off of that. Easy people easy.

I bought my car in very nice shape that is true. However, ALOT of "tender love and care" has gone into it. It was a joke come off it. Although, now that you mention the weenie 305's...

Shut up punk, and learn your place. Some respect would help also.

I HAVE A 350 BOW TO ME!!!!

Someone ban this tool

Congrats... you've successfully made yourself look like a total ***-bucket in only 2 weeks after registering.

Haha geez guys the butthurt on this site is INCREDIBLE! I've been on this site FAR longer than 2 weeks as well! I'm joking! I brought up the 350 thing because someone just randomly defended their 305 unprovoked. Sucks to have your car dinged up but I am joking. And PLEASE spare me the "show some empathy it matters" response to this. NO ONE truly gets offended by some random on the internet.

And now there is a tornado warning.....

Is it headed for Tulsa, OK?

Ha!

Wow that guy really is a douche bag

We already had a couple tornadoes in Tulsa. 12 dead, 127 dead in Moore county. You insensitive *******s.

BAN BAN!!! They aren't being nice mods, BAN!!!

I'm going to send out a search party. The original topic is out there somewhere....

$3100 to repair this? You might find that PDR can fix the majority of the damage and at a much lesser cost. The only way I can recommend PDR is if the paint is worthy of keeping. If the car needs paint, then take it to a body shop and replace the panels that need replacing. If my car was hail damaged, I would do PDR on it because the original paint is still in mint condition. That's the decision you need to make based on paint condition. Good luck

Save up like you did before and get her fixed right! You can overcome this! The 85 Z that I bought years ago for my son, and presently own now, looked great when I first bought it and about a month later, I was at the front of a railroad crossing waiting for the train to pass and I noticed some gray dust coming from a RR car heading towards me...I started to freak out! There was chunks of coal the size of my fist flying out of the drop chute on that coal car. I got the window up just in time to protect myself but my 85 Z wasn't so lucky. We were able to save the drivers side door and fender but it was a loss on the hood and windshield. The front bumper and t-tops sustained scratches. I did file a report with Burlington Northern and got reimbursed.

That's sucks man sorry to hear when I was youngy dad had 78 camaro and it was sweet but around came our luck tornado comes tales only the garage where the car was doesn't even hurt the house but takes the car o well. Hope everything turns out well


Sam

Want a second estimate? Willing to ship?
http://www.parderby.com/

Will be in Omaha/Valley picking up cars on the 7th.

On a side note, Wichita's golfballs got me 10k+ in damage on the car alone.... the house is missing windows.

According to State Farm, with prestine paint (less than 2,000 actual miles on the vehicle), there is a point "way beyond PDR".

dam i hope i can either find a garage quick or hide under something when it starts hailing!!!!!!! i was thinking of hiding in a car wash bay or something I just hope Im home and not at work cause it would be funny seeing my mom hop in the biscuit to a car wash bay during a hurricane..lol