Techno Duck

Im hoping someone here has experience with repairing damage similar to this. Or atleast any insight from those with more experience about dealing with body work. My have very little knowledge about metal work, but know someone who does.

My father and i are trying to figure out the best approach to repairing the damage to my front end. From what my eye can tell, no frame damage. The nose panel took about 75% of the impact with the drivers side headlight bucket the other 25%.

My main concern right now is the upport portion of the radiator support has been pushed back enough that the hood will not lock correctly. The hook part of the latch goes into the bottom portion of the latch, however the hood will not push down into the locked position. This upper portion is welded to the top of the frame rails, im not 100% sure how else its connected above the radiator however. The welds are mostly ripped off on the drivers side and still 100% intact on the passenger side. The two options my father and i can think of are,

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1. Pull the upper portion of the frame back into position. Its pushed back about 1 inch at the corner. And try to straighten out the sheet metal. This bottom picture shows the severity of how pushed back it was.

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This image you can see how badly the sheet metal is bent. Is it likely we can reshape this? I dont have much experience with body work to tell. Steve (my fathers mechanic) will be doing this work considering he has much experience doing body work.



The metal that forms the headlight bucket is deformed a bit also, but im sure this wont be to difficult to reshape.

2. Considering the entire portion which is bent seems to be welded to the frame rails, i thought about cutting the bent one on my car off and welding in a straight one from a doner car. Does that seem at all feasable to do? I outlined the portion im refering to in green.



Secondly, does anyone know if this portion is the same for all years of the 944? I noticed my 924S had the parts extending from the hood latch go straight across, while on my 944 (and a few other late model cars ive looked at) have it angled downwards from the hood latch. Would i need to find this piece strictly from a later model car? I figure i can cut this off the donor car and have Steve weld it right back onto my cars frame rails.

3. Option three is one id rather use as a last resort, which is take it to my friends father's body shop. He does very good work, but is also extremely expensive. Granted he would probably only charge me labor, this still looks like its going to be extremely time consuming. I have faith in Steve's ability to do body work as he has restored a few cars for my father with excellent results. I figure i could do whatever i can, and worse comes to worse have my friends bodyshop repair whatever we arent able to.

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Any other suggestions on what i might do?

Also, does anyone know how the drivers side headlight assembly is taken off the car? Does the fender need to be removed? It looks like its screwed in with the heads of the screw inside the fender.

And can i use an orbital buffer with some rubbing compound to buff this out? I might need a few bottles of touchup paint also.



Actually im going to hang this from my wall by my door. It will be a constant reminder everytime i leave the house to be more careful! The nicest thing about this situation is that i can finally get the front end of my car repainted.

Any and all insight is appreciated, i have much to learn!

Russian Rocket

To add to Jon's thread. I have an early 944(84) and his is late. We were wondering which parts will swap over. The header panel on my car is welded in. If i drill out the welds in the panel and take it off the other parts should be the same as highlighted in the third picture above.
I was thinking about taking out the whole front header panel/radiator support and comparing the two.

por944trs

Having to repair the exact same damage on my s2 cab, after hitting a deer four weeks ago. Take it to the body shop, my damage was less and still required the front to be pulled on a frame machine. Headlight assembly pivots on pins mounted on triangle shaped brackets, outside bracket must be unbolted from inner fender side. After core support was pulled back into shape I just replaced the entire headlight assembly on that side(dr's) with used pieces from G.A.D., David still has two more complete ones.Assembly bolts right and out. Not real hard but worth having a good bodyman do the repair as pieces bolted right on strait and true.

xsboost90

take it to a shop, have them fix the underbody pieces. Believe me, ive done alot of this work and if you dont fix that right, the bodywork will never be right. Its also better if you ever go to sell the car if its not all jerry rigged back together under the hood. When you get it back then you can hang the rest of the panels on it, or have them hang the parts then take it back apart and paint the stuff yourself.

GOSANE

Yep, I agree with taking it to a shop and having the unibody checked for "straightness" on a good frame machine. I bet it needs to be "pulled".

Sorry to hear about the accident Jon.:^(

GOSANE

tod84944

Jon,
I had gotten mixed up on which car is yours. I was thinking that you had the 924S. The factory repair manual that I can get, will be too much trouble. If you go with it, you will also have to change the bottom rad. support, and the front valance. The rad in the early cars sits up higher, than in the later cars. That is one of the reason's why that the early cars valance is deeper in the center lower, than on the later cars.
I would have to second the motion to take it to a shop and let them pull everything out. If you strip the car down, front fenders, front bumper, and all of the head light parts, that will cut the cost down some. If you guys remember, MacFreak had the same problem at the first of the year. He ended up taking it and having it pulled at a shop, and did the rest of the work himself. His was a lot more bent, the actual frame rail got pushed over, but...... I don't think the price was all that bad. It would be cheaper for you. Take the car to some shops, tell them your story, and see if you can get one to work with you. Be nice, they will be nice to you........

tod84944

Woops, I put "factory repair manual", was suppose to be repair "panel"..... sorry, still drinking coffer trying to wake up.

xsboost90

macfreak actually had a front clip welded in from a 924s i parted out, the upper part where the headlights and latch go. Turned out very nice and putting it together was much easier. I just blended the paint into the inner fenders when i painted it for him.

GlenL

Lemme add to the chorus:

"Take it to a frame shop."

You could dive underneath and take measurements yourself. It is hard to do well.

Figure $200 for a look-see.

Techno Duck

Im going to call the local body shop in town to see about straightening out the upper radiator support enough that i can get the hood shut. My friends body shop is about 10 miles away and dont want to risk driving down there with the hood bungee corded shut. Its a pain in the butt as im away at school during the week, so that leaves me friday night and some of saturday morning to get this car worked on.

I figure with a hood that actually shuts correctly, ill be atleast able to drive the car to and from work and school. Then worry about getting the car fixed over the next few weeks.

Todd, im going to see about having the bodyshop straighten out what they can with the radiator support. If they cant fix it to within reason or if its unfixable, i will need to take you up on cutting one off a parts car. The welding to the body work thankfull i can have done at my fathers place.

I will let you all know how things progress. This is going to be interesting seeing how a completley broke college kid is able to get his car fixed!

Techno Duck

Just an update,

Took a ride to Tom Carson's place (a member here, cant remember his username however). Picked up some parts needed in exchange for help working on his own 944's once i get mine back together. Pretty sweet deal! Rennlist rocks!



Anyway this weekend im going to be dropping the car off at my fathers shop. Im going to try and move the radiator support back enough so i can atleast get the hood closed and the car driveable. Again. That brinigs up the question of, is it safe to drive a car with no header panel but the hood latched securley? Worse comes to worse i figure i can try and get the spare header panel i have on the car. Everything will be extremely crooked but atleast have all the body work on.

Also hopefully i can straighten the radiator support enough so i can get the spare headlight linkage in...making the car driveable at night also! To remove the linkage, do i need to take the fender off? Does the end of the drivers headlight bar (the side closet to the fender) slide into this black piece screwed into the fender, or does that come off as one entire part...meaning i need to take the fender off to unscrew this.



This allows me enough time to save up and bring the car to my friends body shop to have the frame checked and maybe have them straighten the radiator support completley. If not ill have to get one from a late parts car and weld it onto my own. Either way the car will be put on a frame machine eventually. I defenetley want to get this right.

Until this weekend...