Rebuilding the Beast

As soon as word got out about the accident I had many offers of assistance. Most significant was Eric Larsen, who was at that time manager of Premier Autobody. Eric offered to put the car up on his frame machine and pull it back into shape. Another big help was from Jeff Wirtz, who had a spare complete front crossmember assembly that he gave me. Without even rolling the carcass off of the trailer I replaced the control arm and TC rod, so that I could actually ROLL the car off the trailer!

As soon as Eric had some spare time I hauled the car over to his shop and on the rack it went. Eric was able to find some dimensional specs for the car and we started trying decipher the horrible quality print. After about 30 minutes we wadded up that piece of paper and just started pulling on the frame rail until it was as straight as we could get it. As Eric said "it’s just a race car!"


On the rack!


Hey look! The strut is straight!
Notice the tire marks to the right of the strut in the fender well? Compare the dented mess above where it says "Tommy" with the shot below where it has been hammered out.


Close enough!


What else can I beat on?


After the frame was straight I seam welded everything.


Don’t try this at home. We are professionals!


Next I welded a 1/16" steel plate to the top, bottom and side of the damaged frame rail to reinforce the compromised areas.

  


I added extra tubes to the cage that go from the dash bar to the strut towers. These are tied in at the same point that the center bar of the cage attaches to the dash bar.

It was not as crude as it may sound… We weren’t so much concerned with getting the car perfect with respect to the drawing as much as we were trying to get the left frame rail even with the right. We took a lot of measurements along the way including a bunch of diagonal measurements to guarantee squareness. We probably did pull on the frame one too many times which resulted in the mounting holes for the crossmember being about ˝" too far forward. So… rather than pull out the right side out to match, or try and push the left side back, I opted for slotting the crossmember. With that done I was able to get the wheelbase and track perfectly square.

Tommy took care of repairing the wheels. He sent the most severely damaged wheel back to John Purner at Complete Custom Wheel. John cut the center out and rewelded it into a new rim. The other wheel was sent to Wheels America in Houston. They tried to repair it but said they couldn’t fix it completely and returned it to us at no charge. The good news is, their idea of completely repaired was to get the wheel cosmetically perfect. There were some blemishes, but I could roll the wheel across the floor without any sort bobble or wobble. I have been running the wheel that way for 2 years now with no problems.

So, in hindsight the accident was fairly major, but with a lot of help from friends, the financial impact was just about nil. Tommy spent less than $300 getting both wheels repaired, the rest was basically free. Now that I took the time to put in additional reinforcement, the car is stronger and probably better than it was before… maybe not cosmetically, but definitely in the structural sense.

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