Slashed.

Sin_Chase

Sin_Chase

Sin_Chase

Soldato
Joined
13 Jan 2004
Posts
21,352
Yup.....had to happen sooner or later didn't it?

A lovely 2 x 6 inch blade precise cuts in the passenger side part of the soft top. Have had the roof replaced by Honda under warranty prior so know it's a 4 figure sum to go via them. Roof is less than 18 months old, less than 2,000 miles on it.

99% sure I know who did it also, cannot prove it though.

/rant over - Goodbye No Claims Bonus, cannot afford to pay the going rate outside of insurance now, and even when I can - cannot justify not claiming for what is 10% of the value of the car at least.
 
Yeah I am looking at Stormsure at the moment. The cuts are clean and I might try a glue only repair for now. The youtube videos showing it's use are impressive (probably too impressive!) but if I can get a water tight seal that's not BLATENTLY obvious I can explore replacing the top for reasonable cost later down the line.

Reckon Stormsure will stick to vinyl? The interior of the roof is actually a fabric I think but the exterior layer is vinyl.
 
Not fussed about the inside appearance to be honest, it's dark up there even in good daylight!

Getting the material off will be a total pig of a job, I'll see what kind of tension/alignment I can get with tape/other in situe and see how it turns out. It's on the flat upper bit which is under very little tensions. It might even slack enough with the roof half open. If I can get good flat no tension access like that I'll chuck the car in the garage and do it there.
 
cokecan72 said:
out of curiousity, who do you think it was?
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I'll cliff notes as it's a bit of a round about thing.

Neighbours across road go on holiday with their car, I run into them on departure and have a little natter.

They tell me "Feel free to use the space while we are away", parking at our place is a musical chair affair, need to move mine to get others out of the garage so was nice of them to offer, they also said it would give the appearance someone was home.

Use space for 10 days, pop out to shops in car, come back 10 minutes later and someone has barricaded the space with a wheelie bin on it's side and some cones.

Neighbours are still away, nobody else has spoken to me or anyone else about the space so I remove barricade and continue to park.

4 or 5 days later I come back on motorbike and guy who lives around the corner comes storming up to me yelling "You cannot park there, they come back tomorrow"

I very calmly and casually inform him that I spoke to them, they gave me permission and they are in-fact still away for another 5 days. He says "Oh I did not realise" and left.

It's far too coincidental not to be him.

Car is still not visible to main road even in neighbours space. It's a private lane.

In the 10+ years I have lived here have never had ANY problems with any of our property.

Slashing is not an opportunity crime, you don't just carry a blade around and go knife 1 car parked on a secluded private lane.

It's possible it happened prior to him coming over and yelling but why do it THEN approach me? The only time the car has been parked away from home in the last 2-3 weeks was when I popped to town, parked up for 5 minutes, went into a shop and came back. In broad daylight with the slashed side facing/in the main road it's highly unlikely it occurred then.
 
Guerrilla said:
Sorry to ehar that OP, bloody shocking :(

Would probably be worth asking him about, maybe mention you are going to report it to the police and wanted to know if he had any information which might be helpful.
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Already approached him and told him that the police were getting a report and when asked if I knew who might have reason to do it I would be telling them him (as a result of him storming over all Mr Traffic Warden)

He seemed relatively uninterested and oddly unfazed by the (indirect) accusation of vandalism. Usually one has a little bit of a reaction to being pointed a finger at but not this guy.

Police were around within 20 minutes to check the damage and put a report in so I have that for insurance purposes if needs be. Understandably what can they do? No evidence, no way to prove it was someone.
 
Had a discussion with insurance. Loss of 3 years NCB (Bringing it down from 7 to 4) and an approximate policy hike of 15%. Not as bad as I was expecting but this is an approximation only, could work out less than 15% at renewal time or more.

I only renewed in April so I assume if I claim now that's the entire year written off for NCB generation?
 
£200 excess.

Not extortionate but not pocket change either :/

Insurance Route
£200 Excess
£40-75 Policy Hike (Between 10 and 20% say)
Gets me a new roof from Honda, warranted by them also.

Aftermarket Option with the chap in Swansea
£260 parts/labour
£100-200 ferry fee
£X for accommodation
£x for fuel
Looking at over £500-600 total, will not touch my insurance NCB/Premium but also not going to have a Honda warranted roof and if something were to go wrong I'm stuck in Jersey and he is in Swansea.

I've never claimed on my insurance before now so sod it, I'll eat the NCB loss and premium hike - totally annoying as hell but it will work out cheaper.
 
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Conanius said:
Surely the best option here is to pay on a 0% purchases credit card and pay off the cost monthly? £600 quid is £50 quid a month over the usual 12 month 0% period, there might even be less if you can't afford £50 a month. S2000 insurance is mental as it is.

Do you really want a Honda warranted hood, isn't your car about 6 years old now so its pretty irrelevant? the Monsoon hoods all the S2Ki guys used seemed decent replacements, and mohair instead of the cracking (literally!) vinyl !
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It's a numbers game £200/£X premium hike versus £600 (+travel expenses to UK on-top)

I insure my S for £420 so it's not going to be THAT bad claiming.
 
Randell Floyd said:
cut and paste from my s2k post, but a little insight into Jack's work and the s2k comments he made!

Sorry, I was going to comment as soon as I picked her up, but I was in Swansea for a wedding so time got the better of me.

The car was dropped off lunch time on the Thursday and I picked her back up 4pm the next day. They had three MX-5's being done when I dropped her off, all being done for the local Mazda dealership! I had a good hours chat with the lads about one thing and another and enjoyed watching them do there thing.

He said what a ball ache the S2000 are compared to the MX5, yet the Audi's and Minis he does are so complicated and time consuming there pretty much not worth doing, but people take them to him as dealer prices would mean a lot of the cars would be right offs.

Although he doesn't mind doing S2000's, he's not going to go out of his way to drum up any extra business for them due to the fiddlyness and time they take to fit, I told him he should up the price, but he refuses to do so as others will have had it for £260 it's not fair! The guys crazy!!

The roof quality and fit are superb, of course it's bespoke so it's not robot quality, but I prefer the fact he's made it fit to my personal roof, so any need to modify and it' been done to spec. I like the feel of the mohair over the vinyl, and I'd say I prefer the look as well.

They also managed to sort out a bloody big squeak I had, it turns out who ever last had the rear shelf out, had put it back missing most of the poppers and so it was barely being held in place, he only had a couple spare popppers and so it's only missing a couple in the least important places, so a big thumbs up there.

The roof is now a lot quieter as the fits a lot tighter, ait goes up and down smoothly and doesn't sit high like some roofs do after a few years.

So all in all 100% satisfied, and the price is just superb. The guys are worth meeting just for a laugh and a chat, and would come highly recommended.

Thanks to all who posted about his service I feel I've had the bargain of the year!
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Sounds good but could be years before I next have any reason to go to the UK.
 
Conanius said:
I thought you regularly had to go to wim due to pothole land being jerseys second name ?

That and.... What a waste of such a car if it truly is years... 30mph is barely vtec in 1st !
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Could say the same of yours being a waste with that granny driving and stick on 'racing' tat.
 
Thought you chaps would get a good old guffaw out of this.

Honda quotation:

Cost of roof as it arrives in box - £557
Total cost for fitment (including labour and a TINY amount of consumables) - £1,881 including GST (5%)

Yeah...pass.

Supposedly this would cost even more in the UK - to the tune of 15% in additional taxation. (Not seeing that somehow, are you?)
 
My glue arrived today so going to find some roof removal instructions and partly peel back the vinyl to get a good flat surface to work with.

If my repair is good enough I'll leave it and consider giving Jack a visit when I next have reason to visit the UK.

If the repair sucks balls then I will let insurance pay Honda £1,800. It would be in insurers best interest to pay for a boat/accommodation and a Jack Smith repair as it would be HUGELY cheaper but somehow I do not see that happening.
 
Oh and Honda quoted 7 hours labour - minimum. Based on Honda quoted times for that job....absolutely mental. I think I could do it faster at home with a laptop as guidance.
 
PiKe said:
Roof removal is such a massive ball-ache, you'll have to dismantle most of the interior of the car to get it out, hence the huge labour cost.
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I only need to get the upper part unpinned from the roof frame so that I can fold it backwards to remove the tension/folds.

Fingers crossed I do not need to go anywhere near the interior or start drilling out rivets. I think the upper section is mostly bolted/and or glued.

7 hours seems silly as 1 - I know that exact dealership has done it in less time when they did the job on goodwill instead of me paying labour (Shocker? :p) 2 - Jack Smith does it in 4 hours according to other members!
 
£800 worth of clips, yeah :D

(And removing all the paint scratches they put on the surface of the boot because they never covered it - Yes, last time they did it they managed to do this :/)
 
Stormsure Glue - Do not bother.

This will be, without a shadow of a doubt, the worst repair ever. Spent the time and effort removing the roof material to get a flat, no tension surface and METICULOUSLY taped the slashes back together perfectly. Spent a good 90 minutes just taping. Was satisfied with the seal/tape and went about glueing it with Stormsure - lol, why bother. The glue removes the tape adhesion and the whole thing just starts to come apart.

I no doubt have half a tube of Stormsure glue on the exterior part of the hood nicely curing itself onto the tape it decided to remove.

If you consider this kind of repair, save yourself the time and hassle and just use a 5 quid roll of duck tape until you get a proper replacement. Looks great in youtube videos on a 3 inch square piece of fabric - totally worthless on an actual repair job.

I really cannot be bothered with the headache - £200 excess and insurance can pay the £1800 Honda bill.
 
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