Polo GTI, Hail damage, replacing Roof?

[pontiff]

Off topic for a quick split second, I bought my 77tsi from the pickles with 17k on the clock and only 14 months old for 10k from that hail storm.. The roof skins pretty riddled with dints but meh... The skins the polo's are thinner than the old polos for sure, in a recent heavy rain storm it sounded like a warzone, much louder than the old 6n1's. One of the downsides i guess of cars getting bigger, manufacturers have to try and save weight somewhere...

[RubAVeeDubDub]

You people do know that they're not actually going to cutting the "roof" off, its just the skin! A piece of metal that's tacked onto the frame. The frame itself is untouched.
Its not an uncommon fix for many cars. If its done by a proper panel beater, you will have no problems and the cars structural rigidity is not affected. Nothing to be alarmed about. Better that then bog.


For some reason people have a silly construct that if you touch the cars panel that somehow its then suddenly its no longer any good and next to driving a cardboard box. Unless you buy a new car, you could have bought a repaired one from the hailstorms and you'd be none the wiser. If no one told you, you'd happily enjoy the car. So why would you care?

Paintless dent repair is an option for lightly damaged panels, but more often than not in hail damage, the actual skin gets stretched because of the sheer amount of dents and therefore its best to be replaced.

As far as getting the car to be written off, it really is the insurers discretion. Sometimes you can talk to the panel beater to give a quote that will ensure the car will likely be written off due to the cost.
But they do demand high quality work that returns the car to its prior condition or better. Its why insurance work is so expensive.
Buyers don't need to know everything - doesn't affect the cars safety and how it drivers so why tell them?

[Gambit]

^ i think the whole point being, is that your the owner of the vehicle and therefore if there is a best case scenario you'd elect to choose the best case scenario with all the facts in hand. Despite it being just the skin, as mentioned if you resell with full disclosure after such a repair what do you think the resale would be?
Food for thought hey.

[QBDentFree]

Ideally, yes it would be nice if they wrote the car off and he got a shiny new one.
With that option out of the picture, I'd almost always prefer new panels over massive patches of bog over dodgy repairs

Sent from my GT-P5100 using Tapatalk