frame work?

[oredith]

well, since i'm stuck indoors by the terrantial rain in paris, i've decided to write a bit.

first a poll for possible solutions:
on the 19th? of last month, i went up north to meet with a bunch of other 914's in a mountain run. my car had an unfortunate meeting with a patch of gravel, and subsequently a ditch on the side of the road. (i think there are aftermath pictures up on www.roadglue.com, if not, randy will have to provide the links). final result, a chebby hauled me out of the hole, and the car drove the rest of the way with an exhaust leak, but everything else is fine. the frame, however, got tweeked. it got tweeked in the direction as if the car was stressed under 2 very heavy people sitting in the car. the door on the driver side sticks when i'm in the car, and is °almost° fine if no one's in the car. there are no °visible° warpage on the frame of the car, and the alignment didn't get screwed up.
now, are there any frame shops in the so cal area that people have dealt with that can stretch the car back to normal specs? (with out the price being astronomical) will the frame tend to go back to the tweeked shaped now that its been stressed once? the doors work fine if i have the car up in air by the two jack points on the sides of the car.

suggestions please, i've been in paris for almost 2 weeks, and there's no describing how much i miss my car, it's going to hurt even more when i finally get back and can't drive it

TIA,

Jeff

[rich]

You could probably just push down with your own weight while the car is on stands and do as good as most shops. The reason I'm stating that is, that Porsches were designed to be repaired on fixtures. If you don't have the factory jigs or a euorpean dedicated bench like the Cellette your just guessing anyway. The other problem is the age of our cars. Even shops with the Cellette fixture system may not have the jigs anymore. If the car still drives the same, just carefully correct the door gaps and drive it. BTW the above is my opinion. Others may have a better way.

[norustscott]

I would check for rust! The frame, if bent, would remain bent. However, if rusted the longitudidals would become springy...sagging only when a load is carried...The rusty situation could have been pushed beyond the limit during the mishap..good luck.

[oredith]

norustscott: my car's body is pretty much rust free, especially at the longitudinals. that's one of the reasons i rejected the idea of ditching this chassis and going to another one because even with this one a bit tweeked, it's probably still better than 90% of the others on the road.
rich: "under my own weight" is a subjective term, i only weigh 125 that said, the afternoon after the ditch incident, i left it on jack stands for a couple of hours, even bounced up and down a few times standing in the rear trunk (hey, no rust!) the door works fine until i let the car back down. here's another thought, and i know it's a band-aid type approach, but if i added a full cage in the cabin, can i brace it enough to resist the bending? or do is the concenseus that it won't help much?

Jeff

[bowlsby]

How about getting it back to 'normal' on the jack stands and welding on some longitudinal reinforcements while its up in the air?

[oredith]

sounds like a good idea, but how thick would i have to make the reinforcements, and what shape?

[Germain]

You would be suprised at what kind of weight 1/4 inch plate of steal can support. thats probably an over kill, but I know it would work. I'd use the jack stands and weld it in place when everything is in the correct order, OR I would adjust the hinges on the door to make a better fit. I would first look into adj. the doors.

[oredith]

it's a bit drastic for the hinge fix, with the window all the way up, the tip of the window overhangs the front edge of the sail by about 1/4". the window DID need adjustment before the incident though. regardless, the door with the window down still doesn't open smoothly without being jacked up.

[iustasail]

I just repared some extensive batery acid rust using the Brad Mayeur longitudinal kit. at $320. its not cheep compared to sheet metal but its 1/8th in thick and fabricated with the right bending machines that we could not duplicate on our own. The result is an excelent repare to bad or week longitudinals. You could jack up your car and weight down the ends if need be to get the door gaps right and then weld this kit in. It would more than do the trick.

[bowlsby]

The Brad Mayeur kit or similar is what I was proposing...if its good enough to repair rusted out longs...then it should be adequate to just strengthen what you already have after realignment.

Have you ascertained all of the damage? bending a long would seem to exert enough force to maybe do other damage...engine/trans mounts? trailing arms? Does your rear trunk lid fit square? Are the rear quarter panels kinked or stressed in any way? Just something to consider...

[bowlsby]

The Brad Mayeur kit or similar is what I was proposing...if its good enough to repair rusted out longs...then it should be adequate to just strengthen what you already have after realignment.

Have you ascertained all of the damage? bending a long would seem to exert enough force to maybe do other damage...engine/trans mounts? trailing arms? Does your rear trunk lid fit square? Are the rear quarter panels kinked or stressed in any way? Just something to consider...

[oredith]

the extent of the damage? the headers are gone, and i think they took the brunt of the hit, there's the superficial damage to the bumper and the taillight lense itself, but nothing else seem to have been effected. considering what happened, the car did INCREDIBLE well, all i have to do is replace the rear bumper with one i have from a parts car, and the visual damage is repaired.

does anyone have brad mayeur's contact info, and maybe some pictures of what his kit is?

the rear right body panel has a VERY slight kink to it at the lip, about 1/16" rise over an inch long section at the top of the curve of the tire well. i think that's because the area was extensively weakened by me cutting out the fender to fit the flares, and the flares were yet to be bonded to the body. the rear lid still sits straight, although the engine lid is a bit crocked, the impact seemed to have re-cracked open the weld that was done a while ago in patching up the 90° elbow mounting flanges for the lid.

ehh, a can of worms, teaches me for going up to play with nor cal people! j/k

Jeff



[This message has been edited by oredith (edited 07-11-2000).]

[Germain]

Brads number
(309) 694-1797

[norustscott]

a 1/8th inch steel plate say... four ingches wide and say... 4 feet long would deflect at least 2 inched with a 100lbs. point load at the center point...not the answer. unless of course you provide a 1 inch weld @ one inch intervals. The longitudinals gain strength not from their gauge but from the shape of the stamping...the box. Guys, I think we are lying to our selfs to think that the flex in the car is a direct result of one rough trip through a ditch. In other words I would suggest that the damage was agrevated by rust. I inspected a 73 that from the street looked concours. even after 30 min inspection I did not pick up on the body flex which was due to internal longitudinal rust. i am also skeptical to think that there has been damage to cause metal fatigue to the extreme that the body reacts to various loads diferently ie. with or without occupants to flex...Man, i hope it is not rust. Scott.

[oredith]

alright, on that note, how would i check for *internal* long rust?... there's literally no hint of rust along the longitudinal, not along the bottom, side, or top. the jack points are perfect, still in original paint.

maybe i should describe the incident more:
the car went in tail first, the ditch was a sharp V, the back end of the car didn't end up at the bottom of the ditch, but at about 2/3rd of the way down the opposite bank, creating a bridge effect, so basically all the load was excerted toward bending the car in half with the fold line in the center of the car.

so, any more ideas?...

Jeff

[Germain]

Well, my passanger side longs are shot. But my drivers side looks completely rust free! That is, until I took a closer look. I pulled the seats and looked under them at the floor board (rusted). I pulled the rocker panel and ooked inside the long with a flashlight. I couldn't see much, but I could see enough to let me know that when I do the longs, I'm doing both. If it is rust, I would almost recomend putting Bards reinforcements on and calling it good until you have problems. Unless of course you want your baby to be perfect :P

[mike mueller]

Jeff,
Ad a rollcage !!!! that will stiffen that puppy up. I'm intalling a bar right now, I'm still debating the full cage or not.

------------------
Mike Mueller
Antioch, CA
1970 1.8
http://www.pelicanparts.com/MotorCity/mmueller/personal.html

[oredith]

where do you brace the points on the cage though? it seems like the bend is occuring right in front of the rear firewall, so adding a cage in just the cabin doesn't seem like it'd brace against that.

[rich]

I've been away from the board for a few days. After reading the above posts I felt it was important to add to my comments. Oredith, Your 125 lbs. May not correct the door gap problem but the problem still needs to be corrected before you weld things in place. Consider bringing the car to a chassis shop or a body shop. Atleast get an expert opinion on where the car is bent. Then you may have a better idea on how and what to straighten. If you don't straighten the chassis before welding in plates and tubes to hold things in place you will have trapped stress in the chassis and and may have an unpredictable car.Let me know if you need any further explaination. I will give you some examples of trapping stress. I'm not sure if I was clear.

[oredith]

follow up question to rich's suggestion:
does any one know of a reputable shop in the southern california region i can take the car to to have it looked at?