[Stevesmini]

Thanks to everyone commenting so far. First thing I thought on the day is why fuse protection didn’t work in this scenario. I’ll be definitely giving it the “air crash investigation” treatment once I get the car back. I was able to buy it back from the insurance company very cheaply and I couldn’t see how I could lose trying to fix things. The car has just on 200,000km on it and had new tyres, new ball joints/lower control arms etc and pretty well everything else up to scratch by the previous owner just before I bought it last year so fingers crossed for a happy ending. Worse case I’ve got my insurance payout and I’ll have a mechanically good territory to use for parts or sell as a complete donor car. hopefully a really good clean out, replacing wiring (although I prob won’t plug things back in unless I’ve found the original fault) and it’ll be good to go after inspection. Im suspecting the loom/conduit had worn through on the seat hardware or maybe a seat motor short circuit, but in my mind I can’t see how this should have been possible to begin with.
I’ve learnt a few things about car insurance along the way too.
1) Shannon’s are a great company to deal with
2) it doesn’t take much damage for a car over 15 years to be classed as a write off
3) being a repairable write off it was cheap to buy back and once fixed can be re-registered
4) repairable write off reduces its resale value and i can only insure it for 3rd party now
5) guess we will drive it til it dies a horrible death (but hopefully not a fire!)
I’ll post an update on the outcome down the track. 👍