P.O. Accident Damage to Front Trunk, Course of Action? Options

[Nojoah]

Hey guys,

I have been assessing the situation with the front trunk of the car recently and I have managed to grind through all the old bondo, bedliner and crap that was covering the majority of the damage to the front pan. Clearly it was brazed in after an accident along with new replacement panels from porsche in their typical red primer. The pan is pretty banged up but the car is surprisingly straight and the hood gaps, bumper gaps and headlight buckets all seem to be where they should be. My question is though - what should my course of action be to repair this in the future? Would the replacement RD front pan suffice or should I dig deeper into the body? Understand that as a student I am by no means looking for a concourse front trunk just something more original and as it should be - this bothers my OCD (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smash.gif)

Side note - this was damage from the first owner shortly after he bought the car new in the 70's so if it's lasted this long, its solid at least.

[Nojoah]

Yep, pretty much what bkrantz said but I wouldn't use a rotisserie for this job unless you had a fancy rotisserie that attaches at suspension pickups rather than nose and tail. You'll be removing a lot of the structure that makes the nose strong enough to hold the weight of the car on a rotisserie.

The nice thing about this job is that the replacement pan becomes your jig. As was said, cut out the old one along the pinch weld seams and plug weld in the new. Go slow to keep from overheating the panel but pretty straightforward. I think the process mostly differs only depending on the source of your replacement panel. I replaced mine with a donor trunk so the front a-arm mounts were already welded in. In that case, I bolted up the suspension assembly so the rear was bolted to my car's chassis, and the front to the donor panel. That kept everything where it needed to be. I believe with the RD panel, you weld the front A-arm pickups on after the pan is welded in. Just make sure the placement meets the specs for under body dimensions found in the '914 info' section.

I also had to do a long butt weld across the rear which was the only tricky part. Not sure how far back the RD panel goes. One other thing you'll have to deal with is cleaning all that brass out from the brazing. Your welder won't like that at all.

I think this is probably the easiest of the major panel repairs because there are few things that can go wrong compared to something like the longs.

Thanks a lot Brent. Cleaning out the brazing will definitely be a frustrating job (IMG:style_emoticons/default/headbang.gif)

Get yourself a shrink disc to help work out all those crinkles. I could actually hear the body pulling itself back into place when I shrunk some crinkled metal.

Sorry I'm not familiar with a shrink disc? Can you elaborate? edit: Nevermind I found it - looks like that'll be useful as well, thank you!

[bbrock]

Sorry I'm not familiar with a shrink disc? Can you elaborate? edit: Nevermind I found it - looks like that'll be useful as well, thank you!

The instructions that came with mine said it was NOT magic but I have my doubts. Pretty amazing what they can do. It isn't going to eliminate the need to replace the pan but will sure be handy for when you straighten out those wheel wells. I wound up with some oil canning when I did mine and the "magic" shrinking disc made short work of it. Made the wheel well tight as a drum.

I'd play with it on the pan though. Since you can get to both sides, it might do better than I think. Remember though that the shirinking disc is exactly that. It shrinks metal. Your crinkles aren't necessarily stretched so even if you managed to flatten the metal with the disc, you haven't removed the problem of the mount points being pulled together.

[Nojoah]

Sorry I'm not familiar with a shrink disc? Can you elaborate? edit: Nevermind I found it - looks like that'll be useful as well, thank you!

The instructions that came with mine said it was NOT magic but I have my doubts. Pretty amazing what they can do. It isn't going to eliminate the need to replace the pan but will sure be handy for when you straighten out those wheel wells. I wound up with some oil canning when I did mine and the "magic" shrinking disc made short work of it. Made the wheel well tight as a drum.

I'd play with it on the pan though. Since you can get to both sides, it might do better than I think. Remember though that the shirinking disc is exactly that. It shrinks metal. Your crinkles aren't necessarily stretched so even if you managed to flatten the metal with the disc, you haven't removed the problem of the mount points being pulled together.

I'll definitely give it a try! At least if I can straighten the pan somewhat that might tide my OCD over until the pan can be properly replaced. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/confused24.gif)