Building a Wagon Queen Family Truckster.

Grizz, I get the feeling we're brothers of different mothers. You just described me to a 'T.'
Anyway, that's how they play ball--they think they own the ball, the court, the officials, the stands, the fans, and claim they invented the rulebook, as well as wrote all the rules inside it. I was lucky a couple times to have dealt with competent adjusters, but when you're saddled with someone who did you wrong that paid money to a fly-by-night insurer, who not only turns you down several times but raises their insured's rates heavily, it's a kangaroo court.

 

Well said, I had a similar reaction.

Good job Grizz, that was a nice lighthearted touch to an otherwise unfortunate situation.

 

Any updates? Hope the recovery is going well.

 

Thank you for asking. Recovery is good, I still have some back issues but I will live. Still waiting on a medical settlement to get back on track and start Truckster #2.

To keep busy I have an 83 Colony Park that was a parts car for the Truckster. I toyed with the idea of converting it to a Ford but instead I'm swapping all the 86 stuff into the 83. I will started a separate thread on that car. The Woodsled 1983 Colony Park.

The biggest update is I settled on the car, but not by choice. They dug in and it was take it or leave it time. The offer went up a little. I still got less than I paid for the car. I pushed and I was a huge pain in the ass. But when it is "said and done" the game is rigged in their favor. I don't mean rigged like an unfair carnival game. I mean it's a complete joke. Picture playing a normal baseball game but every time your team is at bat, the opposing team takes all the bases off the field. Sure you may get that lucky home run every once in a while but your generally pretty screwed.

Luckily I learned the whole process of how this works so you guys don't have to.

First they have to assign a value to your classic station wagon because they know best. The first step in doing that is to hand your case to someone born in 2000. Since that person was not alive when station wagons were built in this country (It's cheaper to hire kids than to keep someone with 35 years seniority) they are pretty clueless on how to handle your case. It's now the job of that person to completely ignore all your reciepts and documentation and proceed to Google and search "1986 Ford station wagon". They will see a picture and think "huh, it's like a SUV car with wood". "Eww it didn't even come with bluetooth or Wifi".

For step 2 they will then look at the pictures of your car and find every flaw. This is a crucial step in the process so they can assign it a condition from 2 to 6 not accounting for age or rarity. Why not a "1"? Duh, according to the play book - no car is a "1" once it leaves the dealers lot. Now they minimize Facebook or Twitter and go to KellyBluebook.com or something similar and find your car. They then take 10% off that value for your cars assigned condition to offer you a lowball offer. Fact is most people take the first offer and that means big savings if you do.

If you don't take it, they already know what they are going to pay, but they want to drag their feet and hope to wear you down with slightly better offers over the next month or two. And that's step 3, they do nothing. This is because they hope you depend on that car for transportation or are making payments on it. You will be more likely to take a low offer due to hardship.

Let's say you don't like any of the offers, your stubborn and you can wait, like me. Well, they pay you a fair value. Nope just kidding, see step 3. They do nothing, its up to you to pay an appraiser out of pocket. When they don't like your classic's appraised value, and they won't...... you have to hire a lawyer out of pocket. Then they fight you through arbitration to avoid court and a judge sets the value somewhere in the middle of the 2 appraisals. The net result is likely less than the offer given. They have fancy accounts that went to fancy schools to learn this trick.

Of course there is another way, you can just hire a lawyer out of pocket and sue the guy who hit you (he will have full legal representation from the insurance company). When you go to court you can try to convince a judge your expert appraisal is more accurate than the insurance companies expert appraisal. Thats when the judge will set the value at what ever he wants and you may get billed all the court cost and legal fees. You lose that way too but......on the bright side...... The judge then retires to his nice expensive home, the lawyer retires to his nice expensive home, the insurance company makes millions every year for the stock holders to buy a 3rd vacation home and then there's you. You get to buy back the totaled car back for 1/4 the offer you got and pay premiums for coverage with a 1000 loopholes. Welcome to corporate America.

Either way unless your dealing with a 4 million dollar Hemi Cuda and the insurance company is trying to say it is worth 100k because of an outdated bluebook value, it is in your best interest to take the rediculously low offer and complain about it to all your friends until they avoid you at all cost.

It's best to go with declared value insurance through Grundy or Hagarty. My car looked pretty ugly so it was declined for coverage. The minimum insurable value is $3500.00. If only my wagon was a little prettier when I first insured it, I would have gotten fair market value. I think the car was worth 4k as it was and I shot for 7k hoping they would come down to 4k. They shot for 800 bucks and fought me all the way up.

Now for the million dollar question. Did the person handling my claim know what a Family Truckster was?

No, no she did not.

 

You should've done to her what was done to Malcolm McDowell in "A Clockwork Orange:" strap her into a chair, with devices to hold her eyelids open, and show her National Lampoon's Vacation, to the perpetually looped tune of Lindsay Buckingham's "Holiday Road."

 

That way, any time she sees a station wagon, she vomits.

 

Haven't you seen the films?!
This is the sort of luck you can expect.

There's a few Wagon Queens around here in Metallic Pea with the Rally Fun Pack, and a guy I raced with in the Lemons series made one and raced it. They are cool. I'm just wondering when we will see a Planes Trains and Automobiles "Farm and County" replica.

 

I want to build one. Finding a good doner car is tough.

 

I was hoping to share 2 giant leaps forward with good fortune on the Truckster stuff. Well, not going to happen yet....

The first is not that bad but it sucks....

I found a 1980 Country Squire parts car that was just a stones throw from Canada and about 1100 miles from me. It was rusty but had the right Speedometer which is made of pure unobtainium, the right bumpers, the right seatbelts, the right dash trim, the right side trim, the right mirrors, all the correct under hood items that are 1980 only, the right glass and many other nit picky detail parts. I am literally 100% done hunting parts! I found it by snooping the demo derby stuff and contacted the owner when I found the ad. He already sold it to a derby guy but he hadn't put any money on it and was coming back in 2 weeks or so to pay for it and pick it up. We are talking scrap prices here so I offered to next day air him a check and offered to do something constructive with it as opposed to destroying it in a demo derby. He liked that since he bought it new and told me to send him a check. I did so immediately.......

I got my check back with an appolagy the other day. This guy is 80 years old and doesn't want to deal with this derby guys crap. The derby guy wouldn't take no for an answer and pestered him daily and told him a deal was already made. It was easier to return the check and let the guy have the car. I understand that. I guess being a local A$$hole has its advantages when buying a car. It bothers me because he can literally derby anything, I can't use just anything. The parts hunt continues........

The 2nd thing just sucks bad.....

Has anyone ever had issues with people stealing packages off their porch this holiday season? I have. Our neighborhood was hit hard over the last 2 weeks. Our neighborhood FB group had been active with people missing packages. Stuff is missing from mailboxes and porches. I am missing 4 or 5 things so far. My wife had to buy a camera that mounts into our doorbell! To little to late....

I have been waiting on a very very special, irreplaceable package to share with you guys! I don't think it will happen now. My Christmas present to myself was, an amazing collection of pictures, a replica crown and an original movie script. The crown was cast off an original. The guys that were making them about 10 years ago put a few extra up for sale online, this was one of those. The script was an original not a replica. I doubt there are many of those left. And the pictures.....

The pictures are a holy grail. They were going to be the most exciting thing I have found and I was busting a nut to post them here. It was a whole roll of pictures taken at the Family Truckster graveyard back in 1983. As you can imagine this is Truckster porn as good as it gets. The only thing that could top it are the actual blueprints and construction photos. A friend of mine in CA put me in touch with this guy. He said after filming all the cars went to one junkyard in the San Fernando Valley that specialized in Fords. This place got a lot of the cars Hollywood discarded after filming. He believes some of the cars from Sudden Impact (Clint Eastwood/Dirty Harry) ended up there as well. There was a regular truckster that was pretty trashed, the jump car, the process trailer cars and all the extra parts. The process trailers were cars cut off at the firewall and converted into trailers for moving shots. One was missing the windshield for the interior shots. The only one that wasn't there was the one saved incase it was needed in the ending reshoot. It sounds to me like that was the only one still running after filming. He believes that one to be the hero car and that one was sold after filming. That checks out because Don Schisler bought one and drove it for years as a regular car. He is the guy that had the original crown all the copies were cast off of. His car might be the car that pulls into Wally World at the end of the movie. All the Trucksters that were in the yard were later crushed. None were saved so any claimed "originals" are just wishful thinking. Luckily he took pictures of all the wrecks.

Yeah about that, the package is about 10 days over due and shown as delivered so I believe it to be gone as are some of my son's Christmas gifts. What sucks is the photos are irreplaceable and he was also nice enough to include the negatives so I could get them duplicated and enlarged. That means they could be lost forever. I have never had bad luck follow me like this on any car build. It's downright depressing.

Here are some things I learned from the man that walked among the corpses that were once proud Truckster's.

The construction of the stunt and back up cars was really poor. They were not built to high standards. (The hero car was not there and was likely much nicer for close up shots)

The front bumpers were cut and a flat piece of aluminum was put over the hole on top. They were not welded back together and rechromed. It was a real patch job and it's amazing what the camera hides.

The grill was fiberglass with a wooden structure. The mesh was metal like a chicken wire.

The engine bay of one got toasty. (Harold Ramis does mention a car burned during filming) He believes that car was distressed to look like the jump car and placed in the desert after the jump. The jump car was really trashed and bent like a bannana it was to far gone to use again.

He confirmed I am on to something with the seats. They were an ugly poka dot, not tweed!

 

Man.
That stinks.
We've had stuff stolen off our porch before. A neighbor and I were just talking about this very thing.
It's crazy that the parcel services don't require any type of signature anymore.
Just drop it, ring the bell and run back to the truck.
I hope somehow that stuff makes it's way back to you.

 

If you'pay extra,' UPS and USPS are getting back to signing for the packages.

 

I haven't (as far as I know,) but someone across the street had that problem. Similarly, before I was a teenager someone delivered a pool heater to a house a few doors down by mistake (it had the same numbers but it was like 202 instead of 220; ) we still got the heater though.

 

The package stealing is new for us. My wife bought the house 8 years ago new, and its a nice area. So nice that I can't even park my junk, err...antiques in the yard. This is the first time packages have been dissappearing. My wife works from home and noticed a lady in a black Mercedes digging in the neighbors box across the street. That was about the time the complaints started. We know what vehicle to keep an eye out for.

Everything is replaceable but the pictures. There are no copies. The guy I got them from is a "flip phone" type of person so they don't exist in a digital format either. That is a loss to everyone, I was going to post them online for all to see.

 

Had to stop reading your post halfway through. Blood pressure already maxxed out.

 

I know what you mean. Maybe other things will happen to counter the bad. I have been bugging Warner Bros studio for 6 months. I won't go away until they help me.