Recently I was parked in a local Food Lion and parked way out in the "Boonies" of the lot. I had a perfect view of my car from the supermarket, and my XFire is all alone in that area. After doing a little shopping I take another look and now there is an old beat up "OJ Edition" Bronco pulling in next to my XFire, I tell my Wife that I am going to move the car. I am now about 10 feet from the car when the rear passenger door opens and six kids jump out and did not ding my door. With that said, The father gets out from the drivers side and then the front passenger door is thrown open and his wife gets out (all 400 or so pounds of her) and dings my drivers side door. One of the children says " mommy you put a dent in that car" she proceeds to grab the child and told him to shut up. The women didn't realize that I was the owner of the car and saw the whole thing. The ironic thing is she denied dinging the door, and I was told that I should not park a car like that in a parking lot...go figure. I then told him that he should not park his piece of sh*t, next to my car and he should let his wife ride in the cargo area, and I proceeded to call the cops.

I do live in the South and I carry a Louisville Slugger, a 9 Iron and a Taurus .45 ACP in my trunk. This day I erred on the side of discretion, if the kids were not there the situation might have been different. Once the police arrived the officer told these people that they need to settle this without police intervention because he would have to take her in. The final resolution was that her Husband gave me $100.00 to have the ding pulled out. I have come to the conclusion that people just do not care.

 

What will you call it?

"Patpur's No Ding Door Thing?"

I hope it works for you. A couple things to keep an eye out for though:

1. Some people may think that the protection is there for their convenience and open their doors even harder into yours which could still cause a dent. And,

2. You still aren't well protected against dings from doors with edges that are longer on the top than on the bottom (such as another Crossfire). For example, a pickup truck typically has a squared and vertical door edge. It will contact the point on your door that sticks out the furthest, which you can easily protect. However, many car doors, and in particular rear doors, will contact your Crossfire door much higher than where the No Ding Door Thing is currently covering.

 

After reading some of the posts, I feel much better.

I too take extreme parking measures (EPM?). Park at the far end of the lot...last space in a row (over to the safe side as far as possible)...a block away etc. My wife gets a lot of drop off and pick up at the door service when we go out.

I am a movie buff and go every week. One time the main floors of the parking garage were fairly full with only narrow spaces with possible dent dingers on both sides. As a result I went all the way to the garage roof. To my surprise there were no other cars there (about the size of a football field). Assuming that there would be some others eventually, I parked in the middle of the roof parking area (taking only one space of course LOL) feeling quite content that the Crossfire was safe.

Upon returning to the garage I took the elevator up to the roof. As the elevator door opened I realized I was right. Two other cars were there besides mine...NO LET ME CORRECT THAT!!! BESIDE MINE!!!

All those open spaces and they parked on either side of my car. It wasn't cold so I know they weren't huddled together for warmth.

As I cautiously approached the driver's side with the F100 pickup next to it, I was relieved to see no dings. The Suburban on the other side looked perilously close on the pasenger side. As I walked around, there it was. A 3 inch long crease that lined up with the door cladding on the Suburban.

Fortunately, the ding did not damage the paint and a call to the Dent Dr made it good as new (less $60 from my wallet).

 

Hehe, I like your style!

 

I hate when the jealous rent a cops at my site say stuff like don't take up two spaces. Moron, I'm parked about 5 miles from the site there are no people within 500 yards so go kill yourself. He put a ticket on my car and then proceeded to warn me that I would get a $500 ticket.

I ripped the ticket in his face and called the security company he works for and told them he was harassing me. LOL the dude doesn't even look my way now.

I hate losers.

 

**** that, I would have waited for that moron to come out, chew his *** out and make sure they paid for my damages.

 

Why don't you try a car cover? I only use it where I work. I figure it'll bring attention to the care I take with my car, hopefully that rubs off on the person parking next to me and if not it'll soften the blow. So far so good.

 

Buggy and everyone thanks for the replies...a car cover will not protect against dings, its just not thick enough. At least mine isn't and its a top of the line Covercraft. I use it when I'm away and don't want my son or his friends messing with my car. I also totally understand that my protectors aren't the total solution but I did make them thick enough with the idea in mind that some doors, because of their contour, would go over a normal molding strip on the side of a car. There are certain truck doors that are up high and there is probably little you can do for those situations. I know dings are going to happen, In the one case so far where I'm certain it would have, the protector, stupid as it may look, worked. I'm working on some other ideas and when I get a minute to mock them up I'll be glad to share them with the forum.

Pat

 

pat...

in order to protect your car... you got to do what you got to do... to maintain a ding free lifestyle.

sometimes... its all about function.

 

I don't know, but someone might try to test the effectiveness of your new invention, possibly leading to a dent instead of a ding...

An alternative:
After doing a quick count of cars (roughly 100) driving around my area, I found only 1/4 of all cars had a passenger. This means that since every car has a driver and only 1/4 have passengers, you can lower your exposure to potential door dings by 80% by simply parking where there is not another parking spot to the passenger's side of your car. (ie, at the end of a parking row, next to a bush, parallel parking, etc. as compared to a parking spot between two others).

 

Jeff - Again you really can't do what you suggest in our lot. There just isn't anywhere where people aren't gonna pull up next to you on one side or the other. These were made strictly for my work, they are very low on the car, you don't see them until you pull up next to me. If someone wants to have at my door, that's vandalism and I'll turn it into my insurance company. Just last week I did exactly as you suggested, picked an end spot and sure enough with a ton of open spaces some clown squeezes in between me and another car. He banged the protector pretty good, the guy was overweight (and probably stupid) there's a good size dent in it and no damage to my door. They work, plain and simple. They are used sparingly and the beauty of where I work is I can look out my window and see my car all day. Most other places I park I am able to find spaces far enough away that I don't even use the protector but at work with the constant traffic in and out of our lot, I use em.

Pat

 

Pat, It feels good to know I'm not the only one who loses sleep over door dings like you must do. As a matter of fact, I thought about doing the very same thing you did when my Wife wanted to start driving the Crossfire to school when the weather got nicer.
My plan was to use two pieces of styrofoam that I could fold up for storage. Not quite as wide as yours, but just as thick, and attach them from wheel well to wheel well. I never thought about the cloth backing (nice touch). Since my car is alabaster, I wouldn't have to paint em either.
After I pointed out some of the dents and dings her Honda has, she had 2nd thoughts about taking the XF to the schools "demo derby" er a I mean parking lot. So I didn't have to fabricate them after all.
I hope they work out for ya. If nothing else, the extra peace of mind you enjoy just knowing that there is at least SOMETHING between your sheet metal, and some careless so and so's door edge makes it all worth the effort.
KUDOS for ya!