MarkDawn Houlahan
Active Member
As many long time MYST.com members will know, our Silver Birch '02 is some sort of moron magnet for poor drivers. From a T-bone that took out the whole left side of the cab at five months old to THREE different rear end accidents (none have been our fault!) Dawn's poor ST has really been through a war zone. Luckily nothing has ever been too damaging (nothing on the frame or major structure)...
The last one was last month when a tour bus returning our daughter to school after a chorus show at Disney World made a left turn in front of her school where my wife was parked waiting on them. The right corner of the rear bumper on the bus caught and dragged her ST eight feet, destroying the bed side, bumper cover, tail light, bumper reinforcement, and the LR wheel liner.
All bolt on parts thankfully, and I've replaced the rear cover myself two times prior (not including when we removed all trim for paint when the ST was only two weeks old). The bed side was new for me, but still an easy bolt-on job.
I got the parts at cost through my local Ford dealer that we use at work and it saved us enough money to get our steps painted body color (our ST came without steps and friend gave us his, but they were the stock gray), add the black step pads to them, and get some new carbon fiber taillights. I think she's as good as new, AGAIN!
Damage from bus, note I had the tie wraped bumper cover to keep it from flopping around until we got the insurance money. The painted steps are already in place here too.
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Here's the completed work, about six hours in the front yard with a little help from my 14 year old son.
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And finally, a nice direct shot of the new bed side. Paint was matched with a color spectrometer using the fuel door, which I removed and sent to the painter along with the new parts (you can see it missing in the first shot).
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Here's hoping I don't have to replace anything else for a long time (yeah right, it's the curse of the Silver Birch, who am I kidding!)
Mark
The last one was last month when a tour bus returning our daughter to school after a chorus show at Disney World made a left turn in front of her school where my wife was parked waiting on them. The right corner of the rear bumper on the bus caught and dragged her ST eight feet, destroying the bed side, bumper cover, tail light, bumper reinforcement, and the LR wheel liner.
All bolt on parts thankfully, and I've replaced the rear cover myself two times prior (not including when we removed all trim for paint when the ST was only two weeks old). The bed side was new for me, but still an easy bolt-on job.
I got the parts at cost through my local Ford dealer that we use at work and it saved us enough money to get our steps painted body color (our ST came without steps and friend gave us his, but they were the stock gray), add the black step pads to them, and get some new carbon fiber taillights. I think she's as good as new, AGAIN!
Damage from bus, note I had the tie wraped bumper cover to keep it from flopping around until we got the insurance money. The painted steps are already in place here too.
[Broken External Image]:
Here's the completed work, about six hours in the front yard with a little help from my 14 year old son.
[Broken External Image]:
And finally, a nice direct shot of the new bed side. Paint was matched with a color spectrometer using the fuel door, which I removed and sent to the painter along with the new parts (you can see it missing in the first shot).
[Broken External Image]:
Here's hoping I don't have to replace anything else for a long time (yeah right, it's the curse of the Silver Birch, who am I kidding!)
Mark
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