front frame collision repair

[Muskrat]

The pictures kind of speak for themselves. Some time in this car's lifespan, its taken a 'light' bump on the nose, resulting in some rather interesting reconstruction. The passenger inner fender has been cut and replaced forward of the shock towers. All of the work appears to have been done with oxyfuel welding and some kind of bronze colored filler. I've been uncovering this filler material over the entire passenger side of the engine bay, across the core support, and on a few places on the driver side.

 

I'm including shots of the damaged passenger side and shots of the relatively unmolested driver side for reference. Pictures are aligned as if you were standing in front of the car looking towards it, left picture is passenger side, right is driver.

 

The upper portion of the core support is all factory welds, with the lower made up entirely of bronze colored welds.

 

Matching creases in the upper frame on both driver and passenger sides at roughly the same point, complete with drilled holes.

 

Moving back now from the front of the car, the headlight bucket area, most notably the left side, which has been completely reattached.

 

 

Finally, the inner fenders. The passenger side has been completely chopped and replaced forward of the shock tower, I've since (poorly) welded the two pieces completely together, as the origional repair welds had long since broken and seam sealer was the only thing holding it together.

 

EDIT: The upper frame on the left side has been partially replaced as well, and now has a nice gap even with the shock tower.

 

Now, I know very little about how body shops do frame repair of this kind, so this may be perfectly workable (I did drive it like this for two years). However, with the new turbo engine going in and the possibility of seeing autocross / roadrace time, I want the peace of mind that comes with knowing my frame is solid.

 

My main concerns are the creases in the frame and the shoddy looking bronze welds. Could I just run short 1" seam welds between the bronze ones? Do the creases need to be cut and new material welded in, or can they remain as is?

[Muskrat]

Forgot to add a few minor details. I've got a PDK 8-point front end brace for this car, as well as a 1" front sway bar that will be mounted as well.

 

We also just ordered a Millermatic 135, our old flux core welder just doesn't cut it for sheetmetal work.

[Mikelly]

Me personally, I would grind that bronze off, and seam weld the whole engine bay after you get the car to another frame shop to confirm the car is square. You didn't have the work done, so you can't verify the craftsmanship of the shop that did it.

 

Once you confirm it is square and worthy of re-enforcement, I'd weld those seams and call it a day... But do the whole engine bay while you're there... In for a penny, in for a pound!

Mike

[Muskrat]

Also known as 'while I'm at it' sydrome. A nasty ailment, it turned my stock L28ET swap into a megasquirted, GT35'ed, complete teardown and rebuild.

 

Ballpark figure, how much should I be expecting to spend at a frame shop to put the car on a rack, and do any frame straightening necessary?

[kcelectronics]

You can’t weld over the bronze!!!!! even if you grind off the visible areas there will still be material between the joint and this will melt when you try to weld it and will try to mix with the steel causing a very poor weld! You can stitch weld between the bronze if you wanted to, But there are many cars that have brazed lap joints as they are still very strong when compared to the original spot welds.

 

Colin:twisted:

[Mikelly]

I should have been more specific in my comments... KCElectronics is correct. You have to remove all traces of bronse from ALL of the metal. This may require spreading the seams to get it out. I'd still want to do that if at all possible to re-attach the material.

 

My guess is you're gonna have minimum of $500 in a good frame alignment.

Mike

[Muskrat]

Actually, since the bronze can't really hurt anything on its own, I'd just as soon leave it alone and seam weld in between the bronze joints.

 

$500+ is a little hard to chew on after spending nearly $600 on a welder, but I'll definately have the frame checked, and decide what to do from there.

[Mikelly]

Do a search here, as someone in the past couple of years had a similar issue and had guys pull measurements from their "same year/ same production date range" cars to compare measurements in order to determine if the car was out of square. You may be able to conclude after stringing the car that it was repaired properly...

 

I don't remember how long ago, but it has been several years since the topic was started... Search in the body/paint or chassis section.

 

MIke

[kcelectronics]

Here is the Underbody Alignment Sheet for you to check the chasssis.

 

 

 

Colin:twisted:

[mom'sZ]

OK... the bronze colored stuff is brass. Its use was pretty typical back when our cars were a current model. When I was a young man (25 years ago) working in the body shop biz, we had never even heard of a mig welder. There was one way to weld on the body of a car... oxy/acetylene torch. And there were two methods to torch weld, brass and steel. Brass was easier, it has a lower melting point then steel. To use it on steel it needed a flux and rods coated with such were readily available. You didn't allow the steel to completely melt, you warmed it until it was glowing red hot, and the brass would melt in. It was more of a soldering type thing to me then welding. Using a steel rod was harder to master, you had to actually heat the two pieces to melting temp. A lot of guys took the easier route and brass welded stuff. But as a body repair method it had it's short comings. The flux residue left over is corrosive and must be cleaned off. Grinding rarely removed all of it and even a tiny amount will cause body filler to bubble. Really the only sure fire way to clean it was to sand blast. And has been disscussed here often, sand blasting is messy. Most guys skipped that step.

 

With unibody cars, when they are damaged in a collision, the proper method of repair is to realign the damaged area with a frame machine to fix secondary damage, then cut off the damaged area and replace. The repair on your Zcar looks consistent with that method. It's common to replace the core support panel, they're right out front and often take the shot. And in your case, the one side got crushed as well. It was also common to replace the inner fender from the tower foward, some cars even have a seam there. So... the repair looks ok in that respect. But the use of brass to weld it up, well... the guy didn't do it how I would have done it. The other thing I didn't like was the crease in the other side with the bullet holes. Those are from a slide hammer. That upper sort of boxed section of the inner fender is for strength and should have been more properly straightened.

What to do now? Well if it was a street car and you really didn't plan to use the car for any type of sporting event that included handling trials I would say clean the brass up with a sand blaster, carefully reseam seal it, paint and reassemble the car. Even if the car was going to be occasionaly autoXed a little bit for fun, it (the repair) would probably suffice. But if you truely want to regain all the original strength of the unibody, you would have to properly repair the damage. Which in my opinion would mean cutting the brassed up panels back off and replacing them with new. A little extreme, but I'm a body man (retired) If you really were cash strapped you might could reuse the panels by cutting them off, cleaning all the brass off and welding them back on. (it might work on the core support panel) Is there a middle ground? Well... you probably could weld between the brass welds with a mig. Pick places between the brass welds where there is no brass. (the brass will definitly screw up your mig welds) If you can get a lot of good strong tacks in between the brass, then you may be all right. I'd plate in the one place were the crease is in the inner fender or something. I'll have to look closer at the pics.

[Dragonfly]

I agree with everything that mom'sZ said but there is one thing I want to add that I have not seen yet in any of the postings on "welding/body work". It has been and still is common for brazing with brass in the repair of automotive damage and as stated above one of the primary reasons is because it is fairly easy and the metal is not heated as much. What I have not seen stated is that brazing with a brass rod when done properly will create a bond that is stronger than the base metal alone. What is very important when brazing (just like welding) is that the metal be maticulasly clean, but the other important thing with brazing is that the metal should always have at least a 1" overlap otherwise you won't get the "penitration" you need.

 

There is nothing wrong with brazed body work but if the work looks subpar then you have more potential to have things come apart than if it was welded. Looking at the pictures I would say the work in the boxed in area was subpar which would make me concerned about the rest of the work. I would find someone in the area who knows body work and have them take a close look at it for you then take thier advice on where to go from there.

 

Dragonfly

[mom'sZ]

About the brass... there is nothing wrong with using brass for body work on non-structural parts of the car so long as it is cleaned up properly afterwards. But on structural parts of the car, such as the unibody itself, I wouldn't recomend it. Most unibodies are constructed with what's called HSS, short for high strength steel. The mig welder creates much higher heat in the area of the actual weld, but the time needed to create the weld is very short. Because of this the surrounding sheet metal is heated a lot less then when a torch is used. Even when you are using brass which melts much quicker then steel, the torch heats up the area and destroys the strength in the steel. The brass is much stronger then the surrounding steel, but also much more hard and brittle. If the area is in another accident, the sheet metal tends to tear around the brass weld.

[spotfitz]

I noticed you are in the Richardson area and thought I would throw you a bone. This isn't close to you, but it would be worth the time. If you need help getting it there, let me know.

Jerry, the owner of All Z's also has a body shop in Mansfield that has a frame machine. David is the guy that runs it. Very knowledgable when it comes to frame straightening. I've seen him do some amazing things with some otherwise trashed cars before. This is including a very good friends car. Give Jerry a call and see what he can do for you. I'm going off of memory for the number because I don't have a card handy 817-483-0383, if thats not correct pm/email me. Tell him I(Johnathan) sent you and maybe he'll raise the price on you. LOL

[Guest ON3GO]

Everything these guys said.

thats a kink and theres no straight'n'ing (lol) that, find a good area to section it and start cutting.

do the same thing to a donar car and weld the new better parts in.

 

mike

[Muskrat]

Actually, I had completely forgotten Jerry has a frame machine. I'll have to give him a call later on today. Thats for the reminder, Spot.

[tube80z]

About the brass... there is nothing wrong with using brass for body work on non-structural parts of the car so long as it is cleaned up properly afterwards. But on structural parts of the car, such as the unibody itself, I wouldn't recomend it.

 

What about MIG brazing http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=MIG+brazing&btnG=Google+Search

 

Cary

[buZy]

I agree %100... This day and age the welding techonlogy is awesome.