Just need the opinion of ppl that may have experienced this or even someone that has alil knowledge on my delimma.

So, my strut tower started off with a little crack.. and with alil neglect, lowering springs, and the shitty streets of my town that crack has turned into something catastrophic!

Here is what my tower looks like now.. Do yall think its worth welding, or should i just get a whole new shell??


http://s1080.photobucket.com/albums/j336/Tmbstn151/

 

Bring the welder out.

 

Wow, Ive never seen that happen unless it was involved in a wreck! I would try and weld it back or have a body shop weld it.

 

u dont think the weld would keep breaking?? also, there is a noticable shift in the frame.. the cars pulls left, the side of the cracked tower.

 

The weld itself (properly performed) would be stronger than the surrounding metal. However it may crack out more around the area if you continue driving it slammed. Of course it pulls now, the strut is sticking up in the engine bay.

 

i def wont be raising it back to stock height... So a good weld should hold, at least til i sell the car?

 

Hard to say for sure. I'd just recommend taking it easy. And please do the next guy a favor and let him know what happened and how you had it repaired.

 

jdm h22, eagle rods, pistons, ported, valves, etc... and i would only want about 4k for the whole car... yea, i dont think someone interested in the car would care to much about the frame, but i do appreciate the input. tryin to find the cheapest solution for me. cuz my next coupe is gonna be a 350z

 

Most def...get it welded professionally and if you do sell it let the buyer in on whats going on with it..i wouldnt want to be the guy scamming or being the one to cause a major accident.

 

Umm, I would..

That's like saying "No buyer is going to care that the basement of this house floods, it has a gourmet kitchen upstairs."

 

is the tower corroded or is because it's slammed to the ground and the suspension geometry is all screwed up? if it's corroded and already broke, it's not worth fixing, unless you cut that section from another car and weld it in. If the car has basically no suspension travel, every time you hit a bump, it's slamming the strut into the tower, basically every bump is like dropping into a pothole as far as the suspension is concerned, if that's the case it's just going to keep breaking due to the metal fatiguing

 

after looking at the pictures closely thats definitely fatigue, the metal has flexed so much that it's fractured, thats due to too little suspension travel and nothing to absorb shocks, I don't think that can be safely welded as the steel itself has work hardened due to it flexing so much. Think of a paper clip, keep bending it and the steel eventually gets brittle and snaps

 

The funniest part is the fact that he kept driving the car afterwards, common sense would tell most not to after the first noticed it starting and get it fixed.

 

whats that dent appearing in my hood and that banging noise? this is what happens when you are down to a couple of inches of suspension travel and have struts that aren't stiff enough or improper springs. it hammers the **** out of the towers until something gives, the only repair are doner strut towers and to repair the underlying issue, chances are the other one isn't far behind

 

if i bought that car and found out that was repaired and i didnt know about it till it broke again, id be livid, especially for $4 grand.

 

there might be a liability issue there, sold as is doesn't cover you if you know of a potentially dangerous issue with the car, and don't reveal it. It's the same as hiding accident damage. when you sell something as is you still have to provide an accurate description, hiding potentially life threatening flaws doesn't meet the term accurate description. if I owned this car I couldn't sell it in good conscious without the buyer knowing about the damage, It being driven like this or even being improperly fixed could cause a fatal accident and kill the driver or someone else. The only repair is to cut the strut towers from another identical car and weld them in, this isn't as easy as it sounds as they have to be aligned perfectly. I don't think the body is worth it. If that little bit of steel hanging on gives, the car is going to violently turn left until it hits something to stop it,

 

If op chooses to sell it or not, and to not, or to disclose the information is all his business and pretty much not in the public interest of the forum. Legal or not this is not Honda-Law.com. Its Honda-tech.com.

OP wanted to know about fixing the shock tower, people put their input, comments, and opinions in here.

On a 20 year old car, getting 4k for it, will be hard. Good Luck, even if it wasnt cracked

 

same thing happen to my friends 94 accord we just brought out the welder

 

wooow...First-off, i wouldnt drive the car, at all period until you get it fixed.

Second, once you do get it fixed, if you dont get different suspension, i.e stock or GOOD aftermarket shock/spring/coilover setup, this WILL happen again and possibly cause harm to you and/or others.

 

the issue is the metal work hardens, even if you weld it, it's going to crack again, thats why you have to replace the pieces, the characteristics of the steel have changed.

 

This is true. Once the properties of steel have been changed by cold working/annealing/quenching or whatever else it's a permanent change in the crystal structure (more or less). It will continue to crack again and again after welding. The "frame" of the car is designed to allow even stress distribution (or at least direct it along a certain path) and with that amount of disruption in flow, it will only happen again.

A good example of this was the portion of my exhaust from the end of the header to the catalytic convertor. My car was lowered and driving on some harsh roads and that joint broke. After welding the section of pipe several times, it would still break right before the weld. It broke because all of the stress was concentrated on that weld and I finally recognized I needed a longer piece of flex pipe to absorb that force.

After welding that strut tower, all of the force will still continue to be concentrated at that point and will continue to fail. It will be a hazard to you and others on the road if it were to have the right sequences of events and cause catastrophic failure.

Just my 2 cents...or 1-1/2...

 

my whole swap is like 2k... just gonna sell it as is for a $1,000 only cuz of the parts on it! I'll sell the lude for $500 if someone took my running eg for $1,500... lol, time for upgrades