monkeyposeur's hatch replacement and body work thread

So I have a bit of free time and I want to take care of some body work on my 95 legacy wagon and complete my rear hatch replacement. As some of you know my leggy was rear ended before I purchased it. The rear bumper has since been replaced. The rear frame was bent worse than I thought and now my replacement GT hatch will not close since it doesn't line up with the hatch clasp. In the next few days I will get some estimates from some body shops and see how much they want just to pull the frame back in shape.

 

I may just get an auto body hammer and tool set as eekay suggested and try to do what I can on my own. My concern is if my attempt to pound the frame back into shape is unsuccessful then I will be unable to put the original dented hatch back on. Before I removed the original hatch it still closed tightly and functioned normally.

 

Aside from the rear hatch problem, there is some rust and a dent on the quarter panel and some other minor rust spots in typical places (windshield, roof). My hope is this thread may help others with similar problems and anyone with body work expertise (such as legman) can chime in.

 

Here are some pics that I have posted already in the 'what have you done to your 2nd gen today' thread. I'll snap some more pics tomorrow that hopefully will better show the extent of the damage.

 

As you can see in the first pic the driver's side fits great both inside and outside. In the third and fourth pic you can see the gap on the passenger side, and the fifth pic shows the misalignment of the hatch clasp. Not only does the clasp not line up, but it hits the bottom of the catch as a result of the frame bending upwards. I think as far as frame damage goes, mine is not too devastating and worth trying to fix. Thanks in advance.

 

Edit: The DW doesn't see the point in my efforts since the car was only $1200 and has 254k.

If you lift up the carpet in the cargo area, is the floor buckled? Just trying to get an idea of how bad it is. One thing I used to do to cars that got hit in the rear and buckled the floor was remove the bumper cover but leave the steel reinforcement, chain that corner of the reinforcement to a tree and roll the car forward to pull that corner out. Usually gets it fairly close and saves you the money of having someone pull the chassis back straight. Crude but effective

I'll check in the morning and snap a pic. It's too cold and dark to go outside. Thanks!

yes I agree with the chain method. We have rings in the floor of our shop specificly for this kind of job..we use block of wood to anchor parts of the car that arent supposed to move and a cable puller (come along) for more control of the actual pulling. save your money a hammer and dolly set wont do you any good here. If there is a gap on both sides where the body was pushed forward you can pull all of the rear carpet and span the gap of the rear door with a SOLID piece of bar or rail and pull in the middle to pull both sides. Your greatest challenge is gonna be anchoring the rest of the car so it doesnt just slide. KEEP IN MIND DONT ANCHOR THE CAR FROM THE CONTROL ARMS OR SOMETHING WEAK LIKE THIS AS IT WILL BEND FIRST. Maybe a long block of wood between the lower body(behind the bumper) and a tree to anchor the car, then pull from the tree with a come along. I say behind the bumper cover because it is likely strong and will be hidden later. If it is only tweeked on ONE side the same method will work just pull on the cross beam close to te damaged side. BE CAREFUL AND GO A LITTLE AT A TIME because if you pull to far it will be even more difficult to push back in without creating further exterior body damage.

 

Hope this helps you get your ride sealed up keep me posted...It will be fun, if it works. Or you can pay a bodyshop prob more than the car is worth to do it for you. Really you have little to lose right.

Thanks legman91! I'll keep you posted as I'm sure I will have some more questions. I'll go to Harbor Freight tomorrow and get a come along and chain.

 

BTW I have been stalking a red LGT like yours for months and am contemplating leaving a note on the windshield asking them if they are interested in selling it. It's so clean I can't stand it!!!

Here are some pics of the floor damage. If you follow the line of the bumper cover the angle of deformation is very clear.

 

Today I went to four body shops for estimates on just pulling the frame. The first quoted around $400, the second quoted $430, the third basically told me to get lost and go across the street, and the fourth across the street told me about $250-300. I am leaning towards the fourth shop if I have to. $300 seems reasonable and might be worth it. I asked three of the shops about the come along DIY. Two of the shops said well, yeah but how are you going to hold the frame securely in place? Don't they know about a parking brake?

I am signing up for an auto body class at a local high school. It meets every tuesday for a couple of months and begins in January. I don't know the extent of the equipment that is available yet, but there is a paint booth. It's pretty cheap ($120) and you provide most of your materials. It should be much warmer than my driveway. It's at the same high school I graduated from and although I didn't take auto body while I went there I remember hearing great things about the class and saw quite a few sick low riders come out it!

 

I hope I can pull the frame at the shop and paint (someimes the booth can be 'called for' by returning students ) my GT rear hatch and my recently scavenged BG scooped hood. I'll post pics of the progress when the class starts. My father in law owns a small auto body supply shop in WI, maybe he can give some advice too.

 

Looking forward to getting rid of the rust!

I DO NOT recommend the use the tree and chain method. You're going to do MUCH more harm to your car than good.

 

The "proper" repair for something like this is to remove the damage in the reverse order that it occurred in (least damaged areas first). We use a couple of different frame racks and pulling/pushing tools and methods at my shop to reverse damage like this. It's not something that you pick up on quickly either, I'm still learning and I've been at it for 2 years.

Yeah, I decided against the tree and chain method because I was afraid of ruining my wagon and I don't know what I am doing. Hopefully there is an actual frame rack at the high school when I take the class. I'm sure it takes quite a bit of skill to pull a frame correctly. I am just hoping to seal up the hatch and get my replacement hatch to close.

 

overspool, how many hours would it take you to pull a frame back with the damage that mine has sustained and what would your shop charge? The shops I went to for estimates ranged from $250-$450. I see you are up in Ogden, maybe I should bring it to your shop.

I'm honestly not sure. I'm out of town right now, but once I'm back in town I'll ask around and see what we could do. I'm an automotive student at Weber State, so I'm sure that we could get it done cheaper than a body shop

Sweet! Let me know what you find out. Thanks.

I started the class today and it is going to be pretty cool. The facilities are excellent and the shop is large enough to easily hold 15 cars. There are two lifts (which I can use for anything I want), mig welders, a downdraft paint booth, grinders, body tools, other tools. I get to use the shop for four hours a week for two months for $120 and I supply all my own materials. Sometimes they offer a mechanic course and I may do that if I can find a good engine to swap in the leggy, but I am pretty happy with my bulletproof EJ22E for now. (Hmmm, maybe I should just turbo that )

 

There is a frame puller, but my instructor doesn't let the beginning students use it. I guess if overspool came down maybe we could talk him into letting us use it.

 

So I am just going to have an auto body shop pull the frame. I'll be out some cash, but it will still be way cheaper than if I wasn't doing the majority of the work myself.

 

I'll post pics of my progress. The leggy is going to look sweet!

I will also have access to a sandblaster. I might just sandblast the finish off my wrx rims. Or I can get the gunmetal gray rattle can paint. Any votes?

 

Y'all jelly?

Ask a senior student to do it

That's what the guys at the auto body shop said today when I made the appointment for them to pull the frame. They also said "Well did you ask your teacher how the hell you are supposed to learn how to do it if he won't let you. It's your car!"

 

But hey, they know what they are doing. They were super cool and showed me how they are going to clamp the frame with pinch clamps on four points on the frame. Then there are these cool gauges that they set and pull the frame until it meets up with the points on the gauges. They seem to like me. Maybe they will let me hang around and watch. It takes a couple of hours just to set up the car on the frame puller.

 

BTW, there was a new subie up on the frame puller today.

 

I'll take my subie in on the 23rd to get yanked. I'll take the bumper cover off at the very least. If I can get the whole bumper off it will be even better.

 

Has anyone taken off a second gen bumper before? If so, any tips?

on the inside of the car there are a few bolts iirc hold the bumper on.

 

since every seems smart on the topic of body alingment maybe i should get some help with my hood. every since my deer my hood fades to the side about a quarter inch. i also can only get one bolt on the hood per side. are my hinges messed up?

I have seen the bolts on the inside of the car. The body shop told me that sometimes when the subie is rear ended the bolts can break and then when you try to get the bumper off the bolts just spin.

 

It is easier for the body shop if the bumper is off because then they can get a pinch clamp on the edge of the floor where the weather stripping goes. Otherwise they will have to use a bar underneath the bumper.

 

swagon, that's weird that you can only get one bolt per side. something ain't right. lol. Do you try to thread the bolts and they won't take? Did you take the hood off and then put it back on and now it won't bolt on like before? I would think that the hood and hinges would and bend together upon impact and since they all moved together that they would all fit back together as well.

Any news are update with this? I have the same problem and the same make and model. I bought the car like this also. The only difference is that it was on the left side and my hatch does close fine. The guy is going to charge me $500. So is your car fixed now?

I'm finishing up the last bits of the body work and I hope to prime it in a couple of weeks. But I screwed up registering for the class at the right time and now I may be out of luck. The woman in charge of the community classes said to register at midnight on March 12th. So I went to register online last night and the class was full! She actually meant the other midnight, lol. It depends on how one looks at it. So I am going in tonight and see if I can get in or not. I did some begging.

 

Anyway, the replacement rear hatch fits great now. The body shopped charged me $300 just to pull the frame out, although I was quoted $400-500 by a lot of shops. I don't know how bad your hatch and frame are, and I don't know if that $500 included fixing the hatch.

 

I need to post some updated pics but I was waiting until I had made enough progress to do a good write up. But the good news I have fixed all of the rust around the windshield and on other parts of the body, and fixed the dented rear quarter panel. I'll try and post a few pics when I get back from trying to beg my way back into the class.

This is how mines look. http://img.tapatalk.com/42575620-ebb8-2eab.jpg

 

My hatch closes fine tho

 

Sent from my SPH-M580BST using Tapatalk

So what is included in the $500? Fixing the dented quarter panel? How does the hatch look closed?

$500 just to pull it. It looks fine when it closes. The hatch has a dent of course but its ok. The rear pass side doors gap is closer together.

 

Was that how urs was?

Your frame damage is much less severe than what my leggy sustained, if you look a the first pics I posted in this thread you can compare it to yours. If your hatch closes nicely and looks fine when closed, then I would pass on pulling the frame and spend your money on fixing the rear quarter panel.

 

If you want to pull the dent your self you will have to buy/borrow a few tools and buy some Bondo and some sandpaper. I would post pics of how to do so, but I was looking through my pics and all my body work photos are missing and I don't know why

 

Anyway, to pull the dent out of your rear quarter panel you will have to get a stud welder. It basically looks like a giant drill gun and you use it to weld copper studs to your body (many studs may be required to pull the dent, I would guess you would need at least five or six). In order to weld the studs to the body you must first grind all the paint off and expose the bare metal which allows the stud welder to make electrical contact with the body. After the stud is welded on a slide hammer is attached to the stud and helps pull the dent out. Then you take a body hammer and pound down the high spots at a 45 degree angle. Next you fill in the dented area with bondo, let it dry, carefully sand the contour back in shape, fill again, sand, fill again, sand, fill again, sand, until you get it back to where it was. I run my hand along the body and feel for high and low spots and sand with a long sanding board. I will then run my hand on the undamaged side to feel what an undamaged panel should feel like. Anyway, it takes a while and patience.

 

If the dent in your hatch is slight, Bondo may be able to fill it, otherwise it is less labor intensive to fine a replacement hatch at a junkyard. The problem with rear hatch body work is it extremely difficult to pull and hammer dents out of them.

 

Your rear pass side door gap is something that I wouldn't worry about too much. However, to make it look better you can take a sanding block and sand the lower portion of the gap to make it appear wider. Basically you would be taking the edge of the quarter panel and slightly rounding it.

Wow thank you, I was so worried and on other forums they told me to basically get rid of the car. What about the part where like yours in the trunk where the floor is slightly crunched in?

 

Thank you again I really appreciate this.

Some people I know think I am crazy to fix up an old subie, too. But I like my wagon and it's worth it to me. It runs great and I want to keep it for a long time, so who cares what other people think? Of course, the Blue Book value on my wagon is only $1500 or so, lol.

 

The buckle in the floor of my wagon is almost gone compared to where it was. But the floor mat covers it up and I don't ever look at it. If you felt like it you cold just hammer your buckle flat, but yours doesn't look too bad.

 

I found my body work photos and will post how I fixed the dent in the quarter panel.