So i'm rebuilding my suspension, have everything removed and i'm looking around the car to see what i'm gonna need to do to spray under coating in my front fender wells when i spot three random nuts with bolt coming through them, they don't appear to be holding anything so i remove them and find this.....




Bondo galore......
So my question is what do i do now? and can anyone tell me by looking at this how rippled the under side is, and what it should look like, its hard to tell what kinda damage is there and i just don't know where to go from here. this is just a huge disaster that i didn't need.

 

 

i would take off as much bondo as possible.. if you have a grinder, take off most of it.. then you'll really know what you're dealing with. take it to a shop so that they can put new metal in

 

well removed alot of the bondo, gonna hit it with a wire wheel next but its not good, still cant tell why someone did this tho?



Also uncovered what they bolted on, but again WHY????

 

does it look like like it damaged.. maybe that was their way of shaving the engine bay... lol
or looks like they put it over the rust

 

That was accually my first thought was that was someones attempt at shaving the engine bay.
But there is some rust under there, it may have been there shity attempt at fixing the rust or stopping it from spreading.

 

Doubtful. Looks like they were trying to patch the rust damage and did a **** poor job of it.

 

It looks like there was lower apron damage and they bolted the bracket in there to reinforce the repair. Looks weird....some people shouldnt do bodywork or work on cars

 

yeah, i dont know why the inner fender isnt black like the rest of the car. or did the bondo just take the paint off with it? possible i guess, ill see what happens this weekend, ill be cleaning it all up and doing what i can to fix this mess.

 

You definitly should look into repairing that panel!! You can do it yourself if you have acces to a welder and cordless drill.. I repaired the driver side on my dc4 if you want me to send you a linky to my thread for some pics.

Before anything, I'd check the rest of the bay while I'm at it, and chase the bondo as far as it goes.. This would make me want to sell this shell! Don't know what other hacks there is you know?

 

Yeah i hear ya, it just sucks cause I've been putting a lot of work into this car, to give up now would be kinda crazy. A link would be great tho so i cant get some ideas on how to go about this.
Also who would a be able to buy a new panel from?

 

this is bad, this is worse than a nightmare, ITS REAL!!!







SOOO........

Im thinking about trying to maybe get the front right corner of another car from a salvage yard and drilling out spot welds to replace my junk, and for the rust just cut out and patch panel it not to bad to fix. just wondering what others thought that have had experience replacing something similar. It sucks tho cause its the whole damn strut tower that need to be removed, i know its possible to replace but DANG, NOT COOL....

 

Dont waste time at the junkyard drilling spot welds, tell them you want them to torch off that whole front section and take the whole thing home with you.

What the hell did they do to your car eh!! Like wow

 

Oh sorry yeah that's what i meant, have the salvage yard just give me that whole area then i can do what i need to at home, but is that my best option?

I know some would say get another car but that seems like giving up to me.

 

good luck with your repairs got quite the job ahead of you. keep us posted on how it goes

 

whenever you buy something like this always take a magnet with you,

 

yeah i should have checked it out better but i should also expect to find some surprises on a car that i got for 500 bucks, also i knew that it had been on a military base for about 6 years and bounced around owners and non of them did any kind of decent maintenance to it. i will keep posting my progress.
does anyone have a link to anything that could help me with this, would be greatly appreciated.

 

I so agree if you don't know what your doing Just stop

 

Well i been hard at work.....

And now that i can get a better view this thing is worse than i thought....

 

Motherofgod, dude im sorry... You need a new strut tower welded in. There probably isnt many spot welds keeping that strut tower attached to the frame rail

 

yep should be pretty fun, im kidding this sucks, oh well it is what it is.
thinking now is the time for a wire tuck though sense I've already got it all out.

 

So salvage yard wants like 400 bucks for the front end of another car for donor metal, or i can just go with factory metal for probably a couple hundred more once i replace everything that's damaged cause i'm sure i'm gonna find more when i start digging into it.
What to do? maybe wait to order metal till i get some of the messed up stuff off the car and go from there?

 

Ouch, time for a RHD front clip

 

I thought about RHD but that's more work than im wanting to do, i really don't want to mess with the fire wall. I'm still waiting for the spot weld cutter before i can start tearing into it. And I'm really leaning towards getting a front clip from a salvage yard sense pricing out everything with factory metal like worse case scenario would be a grand, kinda a lot, especially when an entire front clip is 400.

 

Just my opinion but pull what you can scrap the car and start looking for a better shell why spend what you paid for the car on a front clip when there is a possibility of find something else like this later on down the road.