So the Millennium Escort got crunched dead center of the front end. Dufus turned left across traffic in front of me leaving me about 50 ft to respond and bleed energy from 40 miles per hour. We would have actually had a miss if the guy had just kept going, or even better accelerated. But no, he did what most sheep on the road do when they suddenly see something unexpected coming at them. Anywho, the unibody and frame extensions did not get bent.I contacted the right side of his bumper where it wraps around to form the front of the right front wheel well, and caught the forward half of his right front tire which absorbed a lot of energy as his tie rod bent like a banana. So, all of the impact was concentrated dead center of the bumper. The bumper reinforcement is actually made of plastic and is quite an ingenious design as it did an incredible job of absorbing a lot of the energy as his bumper came pushing through. I have disassembled and removed every single piece that got bent broken or mangled except for the radiator support panel. The radiator support panel actually bolts on to the unibody frame extensions however during Factory assembly it also got Stitch welded to the frame extensions as well as bits of the unibody on the side which form the inner wheel wells. So in addition to removing the 10 fairly Stout bolts which actually attach the thing I obviously have to drill out a Berkley ton of Stitch welds in order to get the radiator support panel off. Obviously Stitch welding the new one is not an option.
The question for you experts in this area is I seem to have three options. Simply Bolt the new piece on to the front of the car and call it good, Bond it with J-B Weld or quick steel putty, or drill out the new piece to match the holes in the unibody and use a crap ton of small Nuts and Bolts. What says the Hive regarding the best choice of these three?
FYI the guy was in a half ton Toyota pickup.
Maybe I need a picture to visualize it, but why isn't stitch welding it down an option?
Do you mean spot welds?
In reply to WonkoTheSane:
Sorry, I did mean oem resistance spot welds
NOHOME
UltimaDork
9/3/17 7:37 p.m.
Why are you worried about this rather than the guys insurance provider?
The check from his insurance company is already in the mail 
The rad support is a structural member, and it wasn't welded in for giggles. Pay the dough to have someone weld it the way Ford did. Structural adhesives are fab, but they cannot legally be used, paradoxically, for structural members, unless it was glued from the factory.
Why not just pull it straight? If it's the one I'm thinking of, you probably could warp it back into shape with hand force.
Pictures would be helpful, and as Knurled mentioned the traditional home repair method is to just straighten it out enough to work again.
BrokenYugo wrote:
Pictures would be helpful, and as Knurled mentioned the traditional home repair method is to just straighten it out enough to work again.
Unfortunately the upper horizontal piece of the rad support (the only flimsy bit of the entire rad support) Is Not A separate piece. The entire thing forms a rectangular box shaped piece which is quite stiff and structural in nature and the upper corner of the driver's side also got crunched. Not sure what my final speed was at the moment of contact but I delivered enough energy to his right front tire and right corner of his bumper to slide the entire front end of his half ton Toyota pickup 6ft sideways. Although I had managed to scrub quite a lot of speed down from 40 miles per hour and only about 30 ft of threshold braking (thank God I was running my sport comp 2 tires) here is the list of everything that got bent or broken and for which I am buying replacement parts: Hood,bumper cover, bumper reinforcement, bumper brackets, radiator support panel, header panel, both headlamp assemblies, transmission cooler, radiator, radiator fan assembly, upper radiator hose, left front fender, both fender liners, battery, battery tray, forward transmission mount, left side motor/mount. Even if I hadn't had this little incident this car was never ever going to be sold to another individual which is making the 3M Panel Bonder a viable option. In fact this stuff looks so impressive that the structural integrity might very well be stiffened and improved over the original OEM spot welds. Believe it or don't the settlement check from the guys insurance is going to be enough to cover all of these parts Plus the paint and paint prep materials I'm going to need to cover the new bumper cover hood and left front fender and still have two or three hundred bucks left over.
Nothing up there is particularly "structural". It holds the radiator and hood catch in place. Any additional stiffness it has is to support the hood latch.
Heck, old Audi guys would just cut that whole thing out because it makes it easier to pull the engine...
In reply to Knurled:
and headlamp housing/asssemblies.
In reply to Knurled:
If I'm thinking right it doesn't even have any appreciable effect on structural rigidity.
That said if he really wants to change it out plug welding (a $90 HF fluxcore welder would probably do) the new one in would probably be the most straightforward.
In reply to BrokenYugo:
Actually on BG chassis cars the red support is highly structural. It is what the front of the transmission crossmember actually bolts to thus supporting the transmission mount. The entire lower half which would be the outer vertical pieces plus the horizontal across the bottom are double thickness U-channel shaped, and the center third of the bottom horizontal piece is actually triple thickness. Aside from the spot welds the manner in which It Bolts to the frame extensions does lead me to believe that it contributes a significant amount of stiffness to the unibody in much the same manner that strut Tower braces do.
Where the transmission support bolts to the radiator support is a jacking point, so it has to be strong.
I wish the OP was closer as I have the exact same repair to have done on the 323. It's the only piece of body work that I plan on having a shop do. It's also the sort of job that is a pain for them, but doing a second right after the first would make the second time through seem much easier, possibly yielding a discount.
In reply to captdownshift:
Yeah it's about the only part of working on a BG car that isn't easy to do. Although this incident happened on the street I've been thinking that if I run this car on race tracks long enough this is eventually going to happen again. Which has me wondering if drilling the replacement panel to match the drilled out spot welds on the unibody and simply using nuts and bolts in place of adhesive or welds is a viable option.
For the love of Mike, don't use any sort of screw/bolt/rivet fasteners in place of spot welds.
I've had to follow behind a lot of that sort of stuff. It won't take long for that stuff to start coming loose and reaming/drifting the holes open. Plus the flexing will remove any protective coatings and create corrosion points.
If it were me, and I was more interested in repairability of potential future damage, I would consider building a tubular structure with proper flanges for attaching to the chassis.
Not knowing the specifics of the spot weld locations I'd be very hesitant to substitute the factory design. Panel adhesives do work quite well, but you have to consider that those panels, their design, and fitments were all planned out ahead of time to work with each other.
IOW, just because panel adhesives work fine in some applications doesn't mean it doesn't have the capacity to fail over time in this one.
Don't you just drop the car off at the body shop, let the owner and the insurance companies involved hash things out, and pick the car up when it's all done? You're honestly hoping to fix the repair with JB Weld and screws instead of just leaving it all to the professionals ? ! ? ! ?
In reply to Two_Tools_In_a_Tent:
Because the total loss value of the car would be greatly exceeded by the cost of the shop hours to change the rad support for me. I did not want the guys insurance company to declare it a total loss and haul it away leaving me to find another shell to re-install all of my good go fast parts and start all over again. So I asked for and received a settlement check that was more than enough to cover the parts themselves and accept the challenge of handling the radiator support myself.
Will you have to get the car insected by the insurance company after your "repairs" in order to get the repairs certified and get it insured again? Did you get to keep your original title or was the car a write off and you now have a totaled title or rebuildable title? Massachusetts has a certain restrictive way of going about you keeping your car after it's declared a total based on the cost of repairs versus the value of the car. I wanted to keep my Mustang but would wasn't allowed to.
In reply to Two_Tools_In_a_Tent :
Well to start, the other driver was 100% at fault so I've been working strictly with his insurance and not involving mine at all. From the beginning I made it clear to his insurance rep and the adjuster who came out to inspect the car that I did not want it to be declared a total loss and was willing to work out a compromise settlement. The adjuster worked out what it would cost them to write me a check for a total loss "like replacement vehicle." Subtracted from that was the approximate 20% that the insurance company uses a general estimate for the Salvage Auction value. This resulted in me getting a check for more than enough to cover the replacement parts and paint and prep supplies and I get to keep the car and fix it myself without involving the hassle of buying it back and declaring a salvage title. It also helped that I did not demand his insurance company pay for a rental car which can quickly exceed the cost of repair to any collision damage car all by itself. In short I let everyone know from the beginning what I wanted to do and that I was willing to work out an acceptable compromise.
In reply to Crackers :
Constructing a tubular structure would be an awesome idea if I were going to be racing the car in NASA or chump/ lemons. However it is my intention to have a car classed in SCCA ITB or ITA. For Improved Touring classing, the chassis cannot be modified Beyond stock in anyway other than what is necessary for the installation of safety equipment.
