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Al came by today and helped me get the hardest of the tranny bolts out. My 8yr old and I got the starter bolts out. He’s reading this over my shoulder. Hopefully he doesn’t know the word “hapless”.
Here’s the busted tranny flange. I thought I’d take it to an aluminum welder tomorrrow and see if he can’t fix it up. I have to go there anyway to turn the replacement aluminum radiator into a copy of it’s ill-fated predecessor.
I grabbed a couple neighbors to help me push the newly acquired parts car up my driveway. Next door neighbor brought his 5yr old kid. Neighbor is a really nice guy who I grab routinely when I need another pair of hands.
Recall the tale of the cute blond neighbor that banged on my garage door at 1AM furious at the racket I was making? Really nice guy is her husband. How nice is he?
Scott: “Justin, I’m really really sorry about making all that noise and getting Dina so upset last night”.
Justin: “Oh don’t worry about it, I didn’t hear a thing. Dina’s a little high strung”.
That’s how nice he is.
So 2 neighbors, 5yr old and I go to the parts car. The paint on the car is awful but the sheetmetal is pretty close to flawless. Justin says to the 5yr old, “you want to ride on the hood”, and then to my horror picks up the kid and plops him on the middle of my hood. Denting it, of course.
Scott: “Dude, what are you doing, that’s my hood”?
Justin: “Scott man, it’s a POS that you’re just taking parts from, what do you care?”
Scott: “Yes, but the hood is one of the parts I need. I went to a lot of trouble to get that hood.”
Shit.
Wife just got in from a 6 day business trip. Parts car is in the driveway with a car cover on it. She parked behind it. Near as I can tell, she didn’t notice it. Lol, women.
Scott, I too have a “helpful” neighbor who just doesn’t get it. I can bring you a straight hood at Mid Ohio if needed.
Thanks a lot, I’ll keep that in mind as this progresses. I’m hoping that I can pop out the big shallow dent.
[quote=“Ranger” post=56935]… “you want to ride on the hood”, and then to my horror picks up the kid and plops him on the middle of my hood. Denting it, of course. [/quote]I’m disappointed. The correct “Ranger Reaction ™” is:
“So the good thing is now I have an excuse to buy a stud welder, slide hammer and Bondo kit.”
Reference helpful neighbors, I have a helpful neigbor as well. He helped me remove the carbon fiber hood off my recent purchase (E30 M3) then dropped it on my driveway. I mean it weighed like 12 pounds and he’s not that big…
Anyone want a carbon fiber hood that’s in good shape other than a 1" chip on the front right?
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[quote=“FishMan” post=56949]Reference helpful neighbors, I have a helpful neigbor as well. He helped me remove the carbon fiber hood off my recent purchase (E30 M3) then dropped it on my driveway. I mean it weighed like 12 pounds and he’s not that big…
Anyone want a carbon fiber hood that’s in good shape other than a 1" chip on the front right?
[/quote]
Dang, such a bummer. That’s a beautiful hood.
Last night I pulled the radiator off of the parts car so I could take a good look at how the radiator support pieces were supposed to look. That made it clear that my bottom radiator support member was shoved in a lot more then I’d realized. So I dropped the beemer back down and set up the engine hoist in front of it again. This time I used two straps and tightened them so tight they practically hummed with tension. I was a little concerned that something might snap and a flying strap & buckle might decapitate an [strike]innocent[/strike] 8yr old passerby.
The pic is an attempt to show how bent in the bottom radiator support is.
[attachment=1465]RadSupportMemberBent.jpg[/attachment]
Sure. The skid plate has several bends in it (some a week old) so it should happily allow the radiator support to bend forward a bit. This effort is pretty much done. The radiator support bent back into place pretty well. I left the straps anchored on to the radiator support over night thinking that the time might allow for more plastic deformation as opposed to elastic deformation that just springs back.
That and the straps are under such ungodly tension that I’m a little cautious about undoing them. There’s no way to gradually release a trailer strap. When I release the first one, it’s going to release with a helova crack.
Wife still hasn’t noticed the parts car sitting in the driveway under a cover.
[quote=“Ranger” post=56972]
Wife still hasn’t noticed the parts car sitting in the driveway under a cover.[/quote]
Actually she probably has noticed. YOU just won’t hear about it until the most “inopportune” moment. Ask me how I know…
– Fred “Married many many years” S.
[quote=“Ranger” post=56933]Al came by today and helped me get the hardest of the tranny bolts out. My 8yr old and I got the starter bolts out. He’s reading this over my shoulder. Hopefully he doesn’t know the word “hapless”.
Here’s the busted tranny flange. I thought I’d take it to an aluminum welder tomorrrow and see if he can’t fix it up. I have to go there anyway to turn the replacement aluminum radiator into a copy of it’s ill-fated predecessor.
[attachment=1467]BustedTrannyFlangeSmall.jpg[/attachment]
[/quote]
Repaired tranny flange. Picked it up Friday and installed it yesterday.
[attachment=1466]RepairedTrannyFlange.JPG[/attachment]
[quote=“Ranger” post=56968][quote=“FishMan” post=56949]Reference helpful neighbors, I have a helpful neigbor as well. He helped me remove the carbon fiber hood off my recent purchase (E30 M3) then dropped it on my driveway. I mean it weighed like 12 pounds and he’s not that big…
Anyone want a carbon fiber hood that’s in good shape other than a 1" chip on the front right?
[/quote]
Dang, such a bummer. That’s a beautiful hood.
Last night I pulled the radiator off of the parts car so I could take a good look at how the radiator support pieces were supposed to look. That made it clear that my bottom radiator support member was shoved in a lot more then I’d realized. So I dropped the beemer back down and set up the engine hoist in front of it again. This time I used two straps and tightened them so tight they practically hummed with tension. I was a little concerned that something might snap and a flying strap & buckle might decapitate an [strike]innocent[/strike] 8yr old passerby.
The pic is an attempt to show how bent in the bottom radiator support is.
[attachment=1465]RadSupportMemberBent.jpg[/attachment][/quote]
Straightened out radiator support. It’s still not perfect, the new aluminum double-bypass radiator doesn’t fit on the support bushings as well as it did. I’m going to have to rig up something to better hold the radiator bottom in place.
[attachment=1468]RadSupportStraight.JPG[/attachment]
I finished the crash recovery effort last night when I put the repaired air dam on and drove the car around the block. The air dam had been pretty beat up and had to be cobbled together with bolts, rivets and a sheet of aluminum.
The fenders don’t look very good, there’s dents that still need to get banged out of door and rear quarter panel, and I need to repair the gas filler door, but none of that is a crisis.
Last night I started working on replacing my rear wheel studs so if I’m into “nice to do” projects, the “must do” projects are over. Well, for the moment, anyhow.
Subject change. The pics above show one of two big holes in my oil pan skid plate. What you can’t see is that on the other side of the aluminum there are some 1/8" strips welded on for structural reinforcement. The skid plate took a hard blow on it’s right side that bent it up pretty well. I don’t know if this occured during the crash. It could have happened any of the numerous times I slid out across the gators during the weekend. There’s still some folks that feel a skid plate is unnecessary. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to bang out dents in the skid plate.