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Classic Cars and Cell Phones Don't Mix Well

Kern Dog said:
That is terrible. You fix up a car you like and it gets damaged so quickly. Hopefully you can get it back together and looking right soon.
The following is NOT AN ATTACK on you in any way....
Maybe the other driver has grown accustomed to seeing the bright lights of late model cars and your classic just doesn't put out as much light as he is used to seeing.
Again, I'm not blaming you, I'm just putting this idea out there as a possible caution to others.
I know that as I am distracted while driving either by daydreaming, singing along with a song on the radio, whatever, a set of bright brake lights usually snaps me out of the daze pretty fast.
@1 Wild R/T is a guy that has mentioned how dim he noticed classic car taillights to be and it got my attention. I have made efforts to make my taillights and brake lights brighter by painting the inside of the housings with white paint.
Stock:



View attachment 1919131

After painting the insides of the housings with white house paint:

View attachment 1919130

This might help you in the future.
Click to expand...
I hear what your saying, but it was a clear day, high noon, brake and signal lights were on. I was turning left into a private parking lot and as I proceded to turn, there was vehiche activity in the parking lot so I stopped untill the cars were out of the way. Then bang. The driver said "I thought you were turning". So reading between the lines he was probably to close to me initally and didn't expect me to stop - i.e. - he was tailgating, on his phone and had little or nil reaction time to avoid a collision. Still shaking my head.
 
dadsbee said:
Trust me... I know how the underwriter underwriter F wheel works with Hagerty in Canada..
Click to expand...
Yeah? Why haven’t you mentioned that before ?











IMG_2140.gif
 
A friend of mine had part of a barn fall on the roof his 1969 Fargo truck that he had insured with Hagerty. After much haggling, the insurance company totalled his truck, and cut him a cheque for the agreed value, plus he kept the vehicle. He was going to fix it himself, but someone bought it from him, instead.
 
Triplegreen500 said:
Do NOT put LED "conversion bulbs" in an old school light assembly.

When you have a bulb, the light exits the bulb in a 360 degree field, and it bounces off the reflector in the light assembly. What you see from outside isn't the 3/4" light bulb...but the reflection of that bulb in the 20 square inches of reflector surface.

LEDs are directional - they send light in ONE direction, usually out the top of the bulb, directly at the red lens (ignoring the reflector completely). That gives you a 3/4" hot spot...and a dark lens and reflector.

If you look at effective LED conversions, it isn't just a bulb. It's a whole assembly, designed around the directional output of an LED chip.

69/70 charger led conversion kit:

View attachment 1919212


See how many LEDs are in there? It's a hell of a lot more than six...like the stock
Kern Dog said:
That is terrible. You fix up a car you like and it gets damaged so quickly. Hopefully you can get it back together and looking right soon.
The following is NOT AN ATTACK on you in any way....
Maybe the other driver has grown accustomed to seeing the bright lights of late model cars and your classic just doesn't put out as much light as he is used to seeing.
Again, I'm not blaming you, I'm just putting this idea out there as a possible caution to others.
I know that as I am distracted while driving either by daydreaming, singing along with a song on the radio, whatever, a set of bright brake lights usually snaps me out of the daze pretty fast.
@1 Wild R/T is a guy that has mentioned how dim he noticed classic car taillights to be and it got my attention. I have made efforts to make my taillights and brake lights brighter by painting the inside of the housings with white paint.
Stock:



View attachment 1919131

After painting the insides of the housings with white house paint:

View attachment 1919130

This might help you in the future.
Click to expand...
I like the idea about improving the reflectivity of the reflectors to make it brighter. But i detect a bit of photo trickery in your photos. The top pic in in bright sunlight with the car casting a shadow on the concrete. And the bottom pic is not . Making the bottom pic taillights looking brighter in the dark. Just my observation from a guy thats practically blind in my left eye.
Click to expand...
 
On the reflector refinishing...movie screens are a reflective white. White, but with some reflective/pearl bits in them, to aid the off-axis viewing. They make a "reflective" spray paint - no color, just the pearls. I've used it on driveway boulders - daylight, invisible. Headlight beams at night, they pop. Nice and bright.
 
Tony Tee......

"I like the idea about improving the reflectivity of the reflectors to make it brighter. But i detect a bit of photo trickery in your photos. The top pic in in bright sunlight with the car casting a shadow on the concrete. And the bottom pic is not . Making the bottom pic taillights looking brighter in the dark. Just my observation from a guy thats practically blind in my left eye."

I had to copy and paste this to get it to show up.
There was no intentional deception. The pictures were taken on the same day from the same distance from the car. What I couldn't control were whatever clouds were in the sky and the position of the sun as it shone through the tree branches.
 
this isn't modern car collision repair......

how do they determine parts? where do they come from? and how long it takes to make them useable?

you're entitled to a full quarter, is it shoved forward? buckled at the wheel house? is the bumper hit?

does the car have an agreed value? is it possibly totaled?
 
I understand that Hagerty is selling insurance that is underwritten from another company. But when we sign up for the insurance with Hagerty, then Hagerty should step and fulfill any void their underwriter will not cover. Maybe @68BabyBlue could chime in and let us know how it really works since he has experience on the legal side with insurance companies.
Most of us have insurance with Hagerty or one of the other major classic car insurance providers. But when you think about it, what their exposure to risk. Most of these cars are not regularly driven, regularly maintained, and not left in places unprotected.
I would love to see the percentage of value of claims verse value of the number of policies they have on classic cars. I would predict it's probably about 90-95% in their favor.
 
71RRHI said:
I understand that Hagerty is selling insurance that is underwritten from another company. But when we sign up for the insurance with Hagerty, then Hagerty should step and fulfill any void their underwriter will not cover. Maybe @68BabyBlue could chime in and let us know how it really works since he has experience on the legal side with insurance companies.
Most of us have insurance with Hagerty or one of the other major classic car insurance providers. But when you think about it, what their exposure to risk. Most of these cars are not regularly driven, regularly maintained, and not left in places unprotected.
I would love to see the percentage of value of claims verse value of the number of policies they have on classic cars. I would predict it's probably about 90-95% in their favor.
Click to expand...
This topic is a real can of worms, and I'm going to hedge and ask any folks who worked full time in insurance to chime in. I worked with claims in house for a 900 truck tank line, dealing with multiple layers of coverage, provided by different insurers. We were self insured for the first $100K in claims, both as insured and insurer. After a run of good years, we got that number down to $50K, with our primary liability carrier taking on additional risk, relative to our premium. We promptly had a horrible year, which led to cancellation of the policy, and me taking a golden parachute in the fallout.

We would pay claims by third parties, subject to approval by our liability carrier (who was on the hook for the next $5 million). Even though we were on the financial hook for our self insured layer of coverage, the primary liability carrier had final say on settlement, and made us spend money without a fight, rather than risk a claim entering their layer of exposure.

In the early years, when I was driving a company truck, I defended the company against an insurance subrogation claim (car ran into our trailer, insurer paid them, then came after us for reimbursement.) I won, and the corporate insurance guy at the time had a fit that I entered an appearance. His boss, whose job I was promoted to years later, overrode him. This story illustrates the tendency of insurers to settle, rather than fight, with numbers that may not be favorable to claimant, or a third party.

State Farm was the insurer of the other vehicle in that subrogation action. My experience with them (they are my carrier as well) is they pay claims to customers quickly, and go after recovery from the other party aggressively, if they see fault. They recently merged with Hagerty for their classic car underwriting. When this took place, Hagerty dropped the agreed value on my GTX by $5K, but still covered me for about 25% over the car's book value, and were willing to go higher if I paid for an appraisal.

I would speculate that anything short of a total loss with these cars is not going to end well. How do you establish value for replacing NOS sheet metal, versus reproduction? I hope I never have to deal with a claim, as I'm sure the rest of you do.
 
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