Fender Bender

[socor77]

Well Yesterday was not the best of days, I got in to a fender bender with my white 76, needless to say i went under the little crv, who had a small hitch, it punctured and cracked the left front fiberglass. and now I have a wheel rub on the fiberglass. I have 2 questions, what is the best way to fix this. should I replace the whole fron clip door to door, or try and patch. The second one is how to post pics on this site, so I can take some pics this weekend. so you can have a better look at the damage. I figure it will be like 1500 in parts if I replace the front clip, and bumper w/o paint.

Thanks,


Drew

 

[Evolution1980]

Well Yesterday was not the best of days, I got in to a fender bender with my white 76, needless to say i went under the little crv, who had a small hitch, it punctured and cracked the left front fiberglass. and now I have a wheel rub on the fiberglass. I have 2 questions, what is the best way to fix this. should I replace the whole fron clip door to door, or try and patch. The second one is how to post pics on this site, so I can take some pics this weekend. so you can have a better look at the damage. I figure it will be like 1500 in parts if I replace the front clip, and bumper w/o paint.

DOH!!! :cry

Depending on the amount of cracking from the puncture and how good you are with laying new fiberglass, it could likely be repaired to exactly how it was without anyone noticing. Replacing the front clip will certainly be more expensive and you have to work around massaging the new clip to fit the OEM stuff.
I'd recommend patching it. Either DIY or find a highly recommended body shop, perferrably a highly recommended vette shop and have them do the start-to-finish on it. I'd think that you should be able to come out for under a $1000, depending on the severity of the damage.

As for posting pics, my suggestion is to go out and register at Flickr.com.
It's really easy to upload pics there, there's no cost, no banners, nor other junk like that. If you have a lot of pics, they even have a free utiliy you can download that makes uploading the pics as simple as dragging and dropping them into the utility's main window.
Once the pics are uploaded, flickr will supply a link that you can cut & paste here. When you are posting a message, at the top you'll see a little yellow icon-button that looks like a mountain and sun (or something). Just click on that and 'paste' the link from Flickr. That will insert the picture into your message.
Or, you can always just post the link itself and we can click on it to see the pics ourselves. (This is a good idea if you didn't resize the pics to a managable size, such as under 75K file size per pic. We still try to be considerate of people on telephone dial-up connection speeds.)

Best of luck!

Oh yeah, one more thing...Welcome to the Corvette Action Center!!!

 

[82ColEd]

2nd that, Andre (as usual.. )..
I had something similar happen a long time ago and they patched the triangel crack above the nose on the driverside fender. You cant tell it's there. But, they might need to repaint the entire front clip to "match" the paint (Thats what my shop ended up doing).. It took some time for them to do it, but the result is perfect (as in unnoticable).

Welcome to the CAC !


-Stefan

 

[socor7]

Thanks for the information

I will be posting pictures today.

Thanks.


Drew

 

[socor7]

Pictures

should be some pics, I have also sent the pic to a vette shop here in Denver and they are going to give me an estimate. I looked closley in the fender well, it looks like it has been repared in the same area as I have wrecked it.

If the pic don't show or are too big let me know and I will change it.

Thanks

Drew

http://www.flickr.com/photos/socor7/

 

[socor7]

not sure why the pics did not show up, if some one could help that would be great.

Thanks

Drew

 

[zgator]

I'm just checking to see if my car shows up.

 

[Evolution1980]

Ouch....those are some pretty bad cracks, especially in the fender. Boy, I'm not sure if replacing that front clip might not be the best route. You'll definitely want to check with a couple different people. I'm not a body-shop person, so I can't say with certainty how easy a patch job that will be. It might be easier than it looks. I don't know...

As for your front bumper...that musta been a replacement bumper because, as far as I'm aware, all factory bumpers were urethane. Only aftermarker bumpers were fiberglass because it was cheaper than urethane. I'd NEVER have a front bumper that's fiberglass. It may look nicer, but one little ding...CRACK!
Front bumper doesn't look to be a bad patch job. If you have to replace it, consider an OEM urethane. The old thing about "paint not matching on urethane" doesn't apply anymore, especially since you have white.
I tried one of the "Tru-Flex" and it didn't work out at all. It seems to be hit or miss with the "Tru-Flex" bumpers...

 

[Evolution1980]

Here... I posted this message in the Site Help & Feedback forum...
It walks you through posting pics in a message here. It specifically is for posting pics from Flickr.com, but can be more or less applied to any site once you know how to get the URL of the pics your trying to post.

 

[Johan]

I'd NEVER have a front bumper that's fiberglass. It may look nicer, but one little ding...CRACK!

On the other hand, if something happens fiberglass is easier to repair. How much damage can a urethane bumper sustain anyway?
I have a "true flex" bumper and I'm happy with it, but I'll admit that the fit was far from perfect when I got it. And what's with the "flex" anyway? It seems to be plain old fiberglass to me.

 

[Evolution1980]

On the other hand, if something happens fiberglass is easier to repair. How much damage can a urethane bumper sustain anyway?
I have a "true flex" bumper and I'm happy with it, but I'll admit that the fit was far from perfect when I got it. And what's with the "flex" anyway? It seems to be plain old fiberglass to me.

I've bumped some things hard enough with my front bumper that for sure woulda cracked fiberglass. Two seasons ago I had a cab back up into me. Cracked and chipped the paint, but no damage to the urethane. It's pretty resilient. The only drawback that I can think of is that it's harder to repair paint chips on urethane because you can't 'feather' the area as well as with fiberglass. Also, in the very long-term, urethane will almost definitely develop waves in it. You see this on a lot of rear bumpers on 1980-82 vettes that still have the original bumper.

The TruFlex bumpers use a composite of fiberglass and some other additive. "Gives it the strength of fiberglass, but the 'flexibility' like urethane." Not as flexible as urethane, but more flexible than pure fiberglass.

 

[82ColEd]

should be some pics, I have also sent the pic to a vette shop here in Denver and they are going to give me an estimate. I looked closley in the fender well, it looks like it has been repared in the same area as I have wrecked it.

If the pic don't show or are too big let me know and I will change it.

Thanks

Drew

http://www.flickr.com/photos/socor7/

Outsh, Dude.. Thats a whole lot more then what happened to mine. The triangle crack in mine was maybe 2 inches on each side. I'm not a body repair man, so i will leave it to others to recommend what way to go. But i will say for me, the money would drive it. As in: How much would it cost to repair it properly versus replacing the entire clip.

Hope it all works out.


-Stefan