Crumpled fender and hood = bad. Afternoon learning body work= priceless.

[Yogawrench]

I have a 1993 325ic Alpineweiss E30. My brother has a 1991 325i Alpineweiss sedan. And 3 weeks ago a deer jumped out in front of my brother’s car at 40 MPH, resulting in the right front fender getting crumpled and the hood getting bent.

The insurance company estimator said the car was totaled based on the costs to repair the car. So, having no prior experience doing body work, my brother and I set out to repair the damage for as cheap as possible.

After posting and PM’ing folks here in R3Vlimited.com, some truly great folks stepped up to the plate with some inexpensive body panels and parts. We got an Alpine white hood off a 1991 ‘vert and a right front fender off of a 1990 sedan. While both pieces were solid, they had been sitting on wrecked cars in the sun for a number of years and were pretty faded.

[xwill112x]

why make things up?


:)

xwill112x got you the hook up

[Yogawrench]

Crumpled fender and hood = bad. Afternoon learning body work= priceless.

So to start the job. we gathered the essential tools we would need: large fan (for comfort), biggy cups of Bojangles ice tea (to keep hydrated, B.F.H. (big fuckin hammer), B.F.R.M. (big fuckin rubber mallet), long shanked phillips-head screw-driver, assortment of metic sockets and box-end wrenches, and a can of WD-40.

We first removed the right front grille and and disconnected/removed the right side headlight bucket, and put them aside. We got a plastic bag to store all the screws, bolts, nuts and fasteners coming off of the car. Next we removed the six 10mm nuts holding the hood to the mounting bracket. There is a major ground attachment on the left side of the hood, so we put a piece of red tape on it to remind us to re-hook this at the end of the job. With this stuff done, we lifted off the hood.

Next we started to unbolt the right front fender. First we removed the inner plastic liner in the wheel well by unbolting the two 8mm nuts and the two plastic 10mm nuts holding it in place. Putting the liner aside, we then located and removed all of the 10mm bolts along the inside of the engine compartment. We removed one 8mm bolt at the bottom of the rocker panel near the passenger door. Finally, we located and removed the two 8mm bolts located inside the fender well near the door. And viola', the busted fender was gone.

[Yogawrench]

Crumpled fender and hood = bad. Afternoon learning body work= priceless.

We started with installing the replacement fender. After about 20 minutes of adjusting and sweating, we had the fender lined up with most of the bolt holes, so we screwed the bolts about half-way into place. Then, using some plastic “shims” for ceramic tile installations, we shimmed up the gap between fender and door and tightened the remaining bolts in the fender.

The hood install was much easier. We mounted the hood on the brackets, leaving the hood “down” so it rested on the rails. We installed the 10mm bolts until they were about 2/3 of the way in, then used a rubber mallet to gently tap the hood until we got the gaps just right. We checked the hood to make sure it opened easily, then tightened everything up, replaced the headlight bucket and front grille and re-hooked the wiper fluid lines. Finally, I spent about 2 hours using clay, compound and wax to bring the new fender and hood back to life. The total cost for the job was about $122.00. I still need to buy an IS lip and locate a turn-signal lens, but these will come next week. Here are some pics of my brother’s sedan and my vert.