Front end frame repair advice needed
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From: New Hampshire
Front end frame repair advice needed
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Hello, I am working on a bit of a project and running into areas out of my experience and hoping someone might bless me with their knowledge. I bought a 2012 Evo X GSR that had a bit of a oopsie in the front end. I believe the car was impacted like below:
From the damage on the car, It got hit kinda coming downward onto the hood, headlight, and bumper. The bumper and hood were wrecked. The car got a replacement Seibon carbon fiber hood (which already has clear coat coming off after being stored in a garage for 1 year before I got it...) which is on the car, and it came with a crappy duraflex front bumper Im certainly not spending money painting. Car will get a new bumper, but my main concern is fixing the car. The main area of concern is the metal "eyebrow" that the headlight mounts to, as well as part of the fender. This frame piece, and the frame piece is attached to, are bent out of shape and causing the fender (which I also believe to be slightly bent) to mis-align with the headlight/bumper. I've taken a lot of the front end apart figuring out what needs replacing. A body shop did work on the car a bit (owner ran out of money and never finished) before I got it although they seem to have done a less-than-professional job, I'm finding missing bolts all over the place and I even found a socket rusted onto the ECU bracket bolt I removed (and a handy 10mm at that).
I undid the spot welds on the metal "eyebrow" and took it off today. Pic below:
I have the replacement metal piece for this, and I have spot welder I was going to use to re-attach. However I found a second problem, and the main question of my post. This metal eyebrow attaches to a bracket which is attached to a "finger" coming off the lower radiator support. Originally I thought I could hammer this back into place, I could see it was bent, but now Im not so sure. See the below pics:
[img]https://i.imgur.com/S8RhwtO.jpg/img]
So you can see bent there. This is what a new piece would look like:
This is the piece the metal eyebrow attaches to, and it seems to be slightly skewed, as a result of this dent. I got a couple ideas. Do I buy a replacement part, and try and cut a piece off the replace just the finger and weld it on? Should I completely take apart the front end, and replace the entire tie bar (does this entire thing bolt on at the bottom to the frame of the car or would this require significant cutting/welding)? Should I attempt to hammer it back into alignment and weld it up? My concern here is I would have gone through all the effort to replace the metal eyebrow, to fix the alignment of my fender, only to have it still be off because of this bent finger thing and then I have to undo and redo everything. Any input/advice on how to go about this is greatly appreciated.
Hello, I am working on a bit of a project and running into areas out of my experience and hoping someone might bless me with their knowledge. I bought a 2012 Evo X GSR that had a bit of a oopsie in the front end. I believe the car was impacted like below:
From the damage on the car, It got hit kinda coming downward onto the hood, headlight, and bumper. The bumper and hood were wrecked. The car got a replacement Seibon carbon fiber hood (which already has clear coat coming off after being stored in a garage for 1 year before I got it...) which is on the car, and it came with a crappy duraflex front bumper Im certainly not spending money painting. Car will get a new bumper, but my main concern is fixing the car. The main area of concern is the metal "eyebrow" that the headlight mounts to, as well as part of the fender. This frame piece, and the frame piece is attached to, are bent out of shape and causing the fender (which I also believe to be slightly bent) to mis-align with the headlight/bumper. I've taken a lot of the front end apart figuring out what needs replacing. A body shop did work on the car a bit (owner ran out of money and never finished) before I got it although they seem to have done a less-than-professional job, I'm finding missing bolts all over the place and I even found a socket rusted onto the ECU bracket bolt I removed (and a handy 10mm at that).
I undid the spot welds on the metal "eyebrow" and took it off today. Pic below:
I have the replacement metal piece for this, and I have spot welder I was going to use to re-attach. However I found a second problem, and the main question of my post. This metal eyebrow attaches to a bracket which is attached to a "finger" coming off the lower radiator support. Originally I thought I could hammer this back into place, I could see it was bent, but now Im not so sure. See the below pics:
[img]https://i.imgur.com/S8RhwtO.jpg/img]
So you can see bent there. This is what a new piece would look like:
This is the piece the metal eyebrow attaches to, and it seems to be slightly skewed, as a result of this dent. I got a couple ideas. Do I buy a replacement part, and try and cut a piece off the replace just the finger and weld it on? Should I completely take apart the front end, and replace the entire tie bar (does this entire thing bolt on at the bottom to the frame of the car or would this require significant cutting/welding)? Should I attempt to hammer it back into alignment and weld it up? My concern here is I would have gone through all the effort to replace the metal eyebrow, to fix the alignment of my fender, only to have it still be off because of this bent finger thing and then I have to undo and redo everything. Any input/advice on how to go about this is greatly appreciated.
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