Quoting myself from Page 4 and March '19 or 6 months ago.
I had sourced the door quickly but there it sat. Well, this week, just 6 months later with the thoughts of winter approaching and the affects of salt on broken paint, I finally just paid to have the work done.
John Welsh said:
In other Prius drama, this happens earlier this winter to Prius #2.
My driver, who had the car knows nothing about it. My fist inclination is to not believe him but from this photo taken the day it was discovered, I think he may have been swiped by a snow plow in his apt parking lot. Notice the plow line comes really close to the car.
That leaves me with no one to really blame with any proof. I really don't want to make a claim which could increase my rates. I have a body guy who did some inexpensive work on the F250. Maybe he can help.
I hop on car-part.com and find I can get a whole door, in the right factory color for $150. The source is Toledo Core Supply an hour away. I contact them and they say, "come see what we have."
To be continued.
John Welsh said:
I get to Toledo Core Supply (TCS) and this is not a junkyard. More of what I would call a dismantler. It is an old industrial building in an old industrial part of town. Everything is indoors. The young guy takes me back into the bellows of the building. Its super dark and I wait for him to head back to the light switches. I'll be damned, in this section of the building are 40-50 Gen1 to Gen3 Prius but mostly Gen2. We search trough looking for green ones. We really don't find the one. We then trake the freight elevator up to the second floor. There in pallet racks is the big parts that have already been taken off the one we were looking for. All 4 doors are there, and the hatch and rear bumper as well as the full grey leather interior.
The door looks great. $150 plus tax, cash and carry and they help me load it into my car.
Back home:
That $150 gets me THE WHOLE DOOR, unbolted at the hinge and harness cut. What I have learned from the DCulberson threads of selling parts is that I will be left with a nearly an entire door. Via ebay, I should be able to recoup a lot of that $150 through the sale of the remaing, glass, interior trim, handles, latches, speaker, window motor, switch, etc. I dream of "net zero".
There is a local guy I met when I sold him a few $400-ish cars ca couple of years ago. He flipped those cars, as he clearly stated he would. From our meeting I remember that he said he does bodywork at home. I had saved his number and spoke with him this past week.
For $275 he hung the door and painted the wheel arch, etc. That means I was $150 in for the door and $275 for paint and labor. All in, $425. Didn't seem too bad. I had talked to a body shop and for the same they wanted $650 for paint and labor. I'm happy with the work.
One little piece of unexpected. It turns out that the replacement door has a tinted window. I'm not sure if I really want to put forth the effort to remove the tint. Maybe I'll just accept the addd benifit of less interior heat entering from half of the left side.
There is a little horizontal line on the wheel arch where the paints don't perfectly match but I'm okay with that. Sure looks better than the multiple lines (scratches) that were there earlier.
This car is P2, my 2nd Prius. It how has 139k miles. I had bought it as a rebuilt title from a bodyshop that specializes in rebuilding Prius and Camrys. They were forthcoming with the damage. It wears an aftermarket front bumper cover, a fresh headlight, and aftermarket right fender and used passenger door that carries a different vin than the car. Now, on the drivers side one of the doors carries a different vin sticker too.
With all this bodywork, the car still drives fantastic. I replaced the brake pads recently but what I hoped was dragging brake noise turned out to be bad front bearing noise. With all that now fixed, this car would be my car of choice for any cross country trip.