Hey fellow makers, I’m in the middle of trying to fix my car which sadly has shoehorned my other projects aside. I had originally wrecked the front end and was thinking I was gonna be scrapping the car but I got super lucky on craigslist. I scored a parts car for $500 that had pretty much every part I need. So here’s where I need help.
I got the front end mostly taken apart, but I’m not sure how to remove the radiator support. Thinking I may have to cut it off both and weld it. or order a new one which is cheap and just weld that one in its place. Is that correct? or am I missing something obvious? If so, I’m probably gonna be stuck waiting for a welding class and a chance to get the vehicle up to the makerspace.
Yep. The same thing happened to me in a '99 Corolla. I walked into a salvage yard w/ a battery powered reciprocating saw, cut the radiator support off another one, and welded it on. Just drill through the spot welds and carefully pry off the parts you don’t need (from each). There are special spot-weld removers, but I just used a brad-point DeWalt bit. I used the parts that bolt on for a jig. Depending on your car you might want to weld on some braces before cutting off your rad support.
The only brad point bits we may have at the space would be in wood shop. Not intended for use on metal. But the normal bits in machine shop should workd to drill out the spot welds. Though you might need to center punch the weld first to keep the bit from wandering. Should be a center punch in machine shop as well.
Auto center punch is your friend. I don’t remember if northern carries the spot drills locally. You can order them through Eastwood as well as many other online entities.
[quote=“Tyler_Roton, post:7, topic:10411”]
am I still gonna need a reciprocating saw
[/quote]I just used the recip saw to get the new rad support off the donor car. It was easier to cut the front of the car off than to try to drill out the spot welds in the junk yard.
I doubt our spot welder will get to the places you need. I rosette welded mine into place.
Harbor Freight has spot weld cutters that work reasonably well. For $5 you can’t go wrong, may as well get a couple of them. Use a sharp center punch to get a good divot in the center of the spot weld, and cut through just the top layer of sheet metal, then use a small pry bar or wedge to separate the panels. You can then sand/grind down the spot welds so that the new panel sits flush for welding.
