1978 Pontiac Bonneville - Parts - Part 2 - 2008-04-26

Time to get the new fender on the car! I started on Tuesday thinking it would be an easy job...



Semi-drivable, ugly, asking for a ticket.



Core support looks painful. It should bang out...



Inner fender is in worse shape than I thought...



Fender is installed, but won't align due to the problems with the inner fender being pushed out. This puts the kibosh on getting this project finished tonight. The core support won't respond to ANY bangs of the hammer, it is pretty thick for being as lightweight as it is.

What happens when a car gets hit and the headlight mounting frames are so badly damaged they don't hammer out? And what happens when the inner fender gets raised 1" and prevents a new fender from bolting on? Why, you need to replace the ENTIRE core support and the inner fender in addition to the outer.



Back to Ecology. Luckily the car was still there. Core support took less than an hour to pull, it was great. Nice and light, probably only weighs ~30lbs.



Inner fender pulled too. 1979 appears to be the same as 1978. Extremely light, just bulky which makes walking interesting.



Parts are home. I drove them home in the Lemans. Don't ask how redneck\hillbilly it was driving all of this stuff home... I solo'd the yard and the drive, talk about fun.



This headlight bezel is all broken internally too. Good thing I picked up the driver side as well while I was in the yard today.



Bad core support is gone. This took almost 2 hours to get out. It was a complete pain.



The new core goes in. This took almost another hour alone. Talk about a real pain. I am still hurting from this.



Remove the old inner fender and put the new one in.



New inner fender is in place. This was the easiest part of the job.

Only another $75 to get the core support and inner fender. Pretty easy job, except that it was hard as hell on me. My hands and body are killing me. The fender is back on the car, but the hood doesn't close because it is down ~1.5" due to the wreck. Tomorrow I take the hood off, hammer the dent back semi-straight (good luck), align it, finish re-assembling the radiator shroud and core support section, and finish the shimming of the passenger side fender (nearest the hood hinge still needs to be finished. Then I can reinstall the grill and headlights and BE DONE. I just hope it is over after this.

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Last updated April 26th, 2008