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Broadsided curb, tore panhard rod bracket off its spotwelds. Repairable?

tintintin

Active member
Joined
Sep 11, 2012
My daughter, not used to driving in the rain, spunout her 1984 764 on a curve and broadsided the curb pretty hard, destroying the two drivers side wheels and displacing the rear axle. The panhard rod bracket is bent and partially ripped off its spotwelds. The car is otherwise in great shape, good runner, straight body, clean interior, no bad habits. What is involved in repairing this?


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Looks like you'd need to heat up and unkink the panhard bar support, as well as re-weld that nut onto the other side of the panhard support that goes into the frame. Might be difficult getting in there. After everything I'd put an adjustable panhard bar in to account for any kind of deformations/inaccuracies in the repair
 
yep. and if you hit that hard, make sure you didn't break the brake caliper on the side you tagged up
 
I had to repair my upper torque arm in the frame rail when the nut pulled out of the frame on my 75 242.

Belmetric has these nice tall collar flanged nuts. I used these and welded it to the back side of some new steel I ordered to match the thickness of the frame rail. Then welded the new metal plug with the nut back to the frame rail and then I welded in some more of those collar nuts so I can add the triangulation reinforcement rear brackets on the newer 240s. I also stitch welded the seam at the lower tailing arm metal to the frame rail because the newer 240/ have a single sheet metal plate that runs down to capture the lower mount point. The rear end is much better now and I added some nordlock washers so that never happens again.


If needed, You can check with vp-autoparts if they still have new sheet metal for that section but I don’t think they have much 700 series metal left. Or cut something out of the junk yard. But your metal still looks good.
 
Unless you have metal fabrication skills and metal forming equipment the car is done. None of that is going to straighten out. It would need to be cut out and replaced.
I don't have welding skills or equipment but do have a parts shell that could donate the rear axle and possibly the panhard bar bracket (IF I can figure out a way to remove it)(drill out the spotwelds?).
 
Agree, that will be the easy part.

Seems like it's going to come down to if there is enough access to drill out the spotwelds to remove the damaged bracket (and from my parts car) and get the replacement welded (or bolted?) in. Might be a total. :(
It's unfortunate but yeah most people would probably consider that a total due to structural damage and the difficulty to repair it properly. There's nowhere to go but up though and it seems like it's a chassis worth saving. See what you can find along the way. In the future though, probably better to let your kids drive cars that you won't mind if they get totaled in an accident.
 
Agree, that will be the easy part.

Seems like it's going to come down to if there is enough access to drill out the spotwelds to remove the damaged bracket (and from my parts car) and get the replacement welded (or bolted?) in. Might be a total. :(
If you can't do the work yourself, the car is definitely a total loss. Just to cut all the sheet metal out of the donor car will take 10+ hours. Then, you have to do the same with your car and trim everything to fit properly. Then, weld it all back in. You are probably looking at 40 hours if you actually have the experience.
 
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