After taking the Scion for its first real drive on Friday I found that the body damage to the right rear quarter panel was enough that it caused some rubbing of the tire whenever hitting a fair bump at certain speeds. Of course this was remedied by just being careful over certain bumps but that still meant that the panel damage needed to be fixed or at least straightened out enough that it won't be a problem.
I had to take the tire off and remove the interior panel on the right side so I can hit those areas with the hammers. I tried pounding the panel from the inside as well as the outside part of the inner fender. After a little while I ended up making a couple of cuts along the inner fender/fender apron . This allowed for the metal to end and move, opening up the gap as the panel straightened back out The cut went along about a foot at the front and the back of the fender well. With this I was able to go back to pounding the panel. I had to keep test fitting the plastic piece that hooks up to the right side of the rear bumper because as I pounded out the dents I had to make sure that the bumper will attach to the quarter with no gaps or at least minimal gaps. With multiple bouts of pounding sheet metal and then test fitting shit, I was able to get things to line up pretty good. There was still a slight gap along with the edge of the rear bumper not matching perfectly. I also had to replace the one screw that holds the plastic piece to the sheet metal of the rear quarter. With everything beaten on and straightened out I was able to finally install everything and fit the bumper corner back into the fender well . I had to use two different hammers, a power drill, power saw, and a die grinder to get the sheet metal manipulated like I wanted. Even though it might not look like much to some, the dents and crinkling have been knocked out quite a bit, enough to allow for the bumper to be reattached right and for the tire to not scrape anymore when driving. At a future date I may feel compelled to put bondo on the panel to smooth things out then put some flat black primer on it to make it at least blend in with the rest of the body color. I would have to have the Tracker back online prior to being able to do something like paint the car since we're talking about putting the car down so I can sand the finish off the paint, mask the car, spray the base coat and clear coat, letting it cure for a little while then wet sanding and buffing the new finish to get things finalized. Only time will tell on that one, but the main thing is that the functionality of the car is restored to the level where we don't have to worry about little quirks or other little things that would interfere with driving the car. Another thing that irked me was the fact that the driver's seat would not recline. The passenger seat worked just fine but not the driver's side. The lever at the top of the seat for moving the seat back forward in order to get to the back seat worked fine but not the damn reclining portion. I did a rough glance at the levers and blindly felt under at the mechanism to see if I could feel something out of place but didn't feel anything out of the ordinary. I had to pull the cover from the mechanism to inspect the linkages to see what's not working . I ended up finding a couple of cables that go to God knows what under the seat that were connected to a couple of rotating mechanisms that keep the reclining lever from being able to be pulled fully back to recline the seat. After seeing that there was no way to make these cables or those rotating cams move to release the lever I ended up disconnecting the cables altogether from the rotating cams, which allowed the things to rotate to where the recliner lever can pull all the way enough to recline the seat. I made sure that disconnecting those cables didn't disable some other part of the seat's operation, which luckily it didn't. With that I tucked the cables under the seat and put the cover back on and relished in the idea that the driver's seat now has the ability to recline once again. Now whenever I do drive and want to lay back, I can!
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