Need advice to settle an Insurance Claim

[arcticathlon]

I was involved in a accident on the 4th of July, and am now ready to get my car fixed. well the thread is here ( I was T-Boned, 300D injured... ).

the issue i have is that i was going to get my car painted in about 3 months, and state farm told me to pick a place that i want it fixed at. but i dont want it repaired and painted back to its currently cruddy paint job, and want to find a shop that i can pay extra to do an estimate for the insurance co. and then let me pay them to paint it all the way around, not just the door and fender.

Ok so that is what i was thinking of doing, but i called the first body shop and they said that it wont be able to do that because it has to take pictures of the car before and after, yada yada. they said it is easier to get a check cut to you and then i can fix whatever myself and use the other money to paint it. this makes the most sense to me, but now the question is how do i not get ripped off via the adjuster that will come out.

i already have the receipts taken out of the filing cabinet, and ebay print outs of decent cars in the 4-6k range. I know that StateFarm uses nada.com to figure the worth of the vehicle and my 1985 300D was not listed under the normal used car place but only under the classic/collector section. There it did not have any options that I could choose with the vehicle but it just gave a base price of 4k low, 6k mid and 10k for collector. I would consider mine a 5k car via the description it gave. Will I be able to use this to my advantage to not have them Total the car or just give me $1500?

That is the vehicle dilema I am in, but I also don’t know what to do medically. I was hit in the side and did not sustain any major injuries, only a headache and a scrached hand. I went to the hospital the night of the wreck and they just looked me over and asked if I had any of the major head injury symptoms. After that they said come back if you have any other problems. Well after talking with statefarm they said that I should send them any bill I incurr medically and that I should send them in to them as I receive them. My plan is to get checked out again and they asked if I would. They then said that once the bills have come in, that I can call them to settle. I wrote down each day what my aches and pains were, which dealt mostly with just a sore neck and headaches. So what do I try to settle for? How much can I ask, and how do I squeeze the most out of them, because I know they will lowball me on my Vehicle.

Any advice would be appriciated,

Dan