Bumped garage door frame, $5k repair

[LowlyOilBurner]

Holy crap. So the one local tesla-certified collision shop that gave me the $5k quote. That was on the phone as an estimate, and the price quoted in thread title. I Just got the official estimate.

$10,600.

I don't want to out them here, but this is utterly abominable. Cost involves:

- a few bucks on brackets
- new front right repeater lamp (no idea why) for $143
- hood emblem (no idea why) for $28
- e-coated fender for $487
- a new wheel (!!!!) for $350. The curb rash on the wheel is very minor (far more minor than lease cars I've returned and not been dinged for)
- $981 for "package and store parts"
= $2.2k in materials
+ $7600 in labor (!!!!) (24 hours body, 16 hours paint, 8 hours mechanical, diagnostic, electrical, admin making up the rest)
+ tax
= $10,700.

I'm open to doing this myself, but either I'm glaringly missing something or this shop is straight up trying to scam me. I don't need to disconnect battery or any other crap to remove the fender do I? I'm absolutely not going to be bringing the car here. I'll do myself or have the other guy do it for $2600.

1/3rd of the value of the car for this dent is a downright disgraceful quote.

Was that Fetzner’s?

 

[Gauss Guzzler]

OMG that's awesome! Nice work!

 

[EatsShoots]

Was that Fetzner’s?

It was yep. I'm still debating whether I will email back their manager essentially calling him out on what an outrageous quote they gave me. My only hesitation is if I get in a significant accident I may need them, but there are other shops 50 miles away in Buffalo. I really think the quote was disgusting.

 

[LowlyOilBurner]

It was yep. I'm still debating whether I will email back their manager essentially calling him out on what an outrageous quote they gave me. My only hesitation is if I get in a significant accident I may need them, but there are other shops 50 miles away in Buffalo. I really think the quote was disgusting.

They are always high, but do good work. Your damage was not 16hrs worth of labor.

I recently hit a deer (67miles outside of the Mt Kisco delivery center, after picking up my 2023 Y, yes, I hit a deer right after picking up my new car). My estimate from Carstar in West Seneca NY will not likely be as high as your estimate from Fetzners. So far my estimate includes:

-Both front fenders
-driver side headlight
-windshield
-hood
-bumper skin
-core support
-left fender upper bracket
-misc hardware

So far the estimate is around $8k. The parts were ordered about two weeks ago, still radio silence from the shop. I’m planning on a couple months for the parts/repair. The car is still drivable (and drives fine), I’m driving it here and there but not my normal 100-200miles a day. I’m lucky enough to work for a company that has a bunch of spare work trucks, which they let me borrow one till whenever. Sucks either way.

 

[EatsShoots]

They are always high, but do good work. Your damage was not 16hrs worth of labor.

I recently hit a deer (67miles outside of the Mt Kisco delivery center, after picking up my 2023 Y, yes, I hit a deer right after picking up my new car). My estimate from Carstar in West Seneca NY will not likely be as high as your estimate from Fetzners. So far my estimate includes:

-Both front fenders
-driver side headlight
-windshield
-hood
-bumper skin
-core support
-left fender upper bracket
-misc hardware

So far the estimate is around $8k. The parts were ordered about two weeks ago, still radio silence from the shop. I’m planning on a couple months for the parts/repair. The car is still drivable (and drives fine), I’m driving it here and there but not my normal 100-200miles a day. I’m lucky enough to work for a company that has a bunch of spare work trucks, which they let me borrow one till whenever. Sucks either way.

I think a lot of collision shops do good work, because it's just replacing modular parts and then the painter blends it. I had a volvo done a few years ago and my truck last year and I never could tell after the fact.

Sorry to hear about the deer hit after pickup. That is truly the worst luck I'd love to hear what Carstar (the local carstar did my truck but they don't do teslas in rochester) quotes you. That's interesting that despite literally magnitudes the damage I have the quote is lower. Honestly I cannot understand the largely very positive reviews about Fetzner on google reviews because this quote they gave me is beyond the pale.

BTW they actually quoted me 53.5 hours all-in.

This included a ton of junk work like this:

That's 6.2 hours of rubbish. Again, I assume tesla mandates some of this stuff, but really anybody can look at this and tell there's nothing wrong with anything but the dent, so even if you "pre-repair scan", how long will that take?

 

[XPsionic]

Another update. I finally got the $497 fender from Tesla. Prior to the $300 paint job I had a local guy quote me (was going to spray the fender by itself and match to paint as best as possible), I wanted to take some bits apart to be sure I could do it and not run into issues. After looking at exactly how the backing layer of metal is on the OEM fender I decided to take a stab at actually correcting it. Given my intention to replace the fender anyway I figured no issue if I wreck it.

Here is a close up of the area with the second layer of metal that the original guy who came out felt he could not properly work with:

View attachment 990622

So anyway, I raised the car up a bit, put a 2X4 on the tire to brace against, and took a standard crowbar to the back of the dent, pushing against the second layer (not the outside sheet metal), hoping that the second layer of metal would somewhat dull the sharp edges of the crowbar. It did not; with some high points very noticeable. Then I switched over to using a 1/4" thick piece of plywood, which worked pretty well to avoid the high points from the crowbar. Within a couple of hours of messing about it looked like this:

View attachment 990623

I was tentatively optimistic at this point that maybe it wasn't quite as hard as I'd been led to believe, but despite adding more leverage and force I could not get any more dent to pull out. That's when I hit youtube up more and found this video:

This was my exact issue, although much smaller in scope. But the problem is I couldn't get behind the dent properly so I removed the wheel, then removed the plastic liner completely (very easy to do with wheel gone), and busted out the grinder:

View attachment 990626

After a few minutes with the grinder I realized a dremel with a cut off wheel was more appropriate, so I finished up with that, but compared to the OEM, here was what I cut off. Notice I was also lucky in that the second metal layer is not glued everywhere, but just in key points--and none of those key points where covering my dent.

View attachment 990632

At this point I felt that the dent was accessible enough that any PDR person could do it. I mean why not at this point? Unfortunately of the 4-5 PDR people I contacted only two got back to me: the guy who wanted $400 but upon seeing it said he couldn't do it, and the guy who wanted $2600 and a week.

I've never fixed a dent in my life, but Harbor Freight for $50 has a "fender hammer and dollies" kit, so I picked it up Sunday morning.


View attachment 990634

Start hammering:


View attachment 990635

After a while (notice reduction on the right side in the dimples)

View attachment 990636

At this point I think holy crap maybe I can actually get this done...

View attachment 990637

Well after 2-3 hours of playing around, taking some breaks:

View attachment 990638

The crease in the fender has in the above pic what looks like paint damage but actually it's just light reflection due to imperfection in the angles.

And here it is outside after some very sparing application of tesla's official touch up paint:

View attachment 990639

WOW. GREAT JOB DUDE!

That was a great story to read, I'm so proud of you!