With the batch of junkyard parts in hand, the work can now begin to start reversing the damage caused on the Scion. The first area I have to target is the hinges for the hatch. Since they were distorted, I would have to first start off with straightening the mounting points out and hopefully be able to get the new hatch to set as intended. I tapped the bent up mounting points with a hammer and attempted to bolt the hatch down to see how things fit. The first attempt turned out to fail miserably. The front of the hatch sat too high, not even sitting flush with the sides, much less sitting at the right height to allow the hatch to open or close without making contact with the intermediate glass. This was no good. My next option was to take the hinges off and tap the bottom portion of each hinge, where it mounts to the car's body to try and straighten that part out. At first I didn't know that the hinge was removable and had initially tried to straighten out the hinge by tapping the bottom portion with a large flathead screwdriver and a hammer. The way the hinge looked it made me think that it was welded in place but when I did some more investigating I found that the hinges were indeed removable. After straightening out the bottom portion of the hinges I reassembled everything and tried again. And again, it was a failure. The front of the hatch still sat too high and made contact with the intermediate glass. At first I wished I knew this when we were at the junkyard as I could've gotten the hinges from the junk car but after thinking about it, even those hinges might've sat wrong on this car since there were probably minute distortions present, even in the body, that would've made a different set of hinges not work. I had to come up with another option. That option would be to cut the bottom part of the hinges, trim the legs of the hinge to a shorter length then weld the bottom part back on. This would hopefully make the front of the hatch sit at a lower point on the body where it will clear the intermediate glass as well as sit flush along the sides as well as the front and back. This turned out to be a success to a greater degree. The front of the hatch cleared the intermediate glass only slightly when the retaining nuts were half tight but once they were fully tight they still had some light interference. The last ditch effort I had was to remove the hinges once more, along with the hatch, and elongate the mounting holes on the body, with the emphasis on removing material going back, allowing the hinges to be mounted just a fraction of an inch to the rear. This move having me set the hinges back ever so slightly, was enough to allow the hatch to clear the intermediate glass as well as sit flush all around the sides and front of the hatch and the opening on the body. With this success finally in hand I can now move forward with the rest of the project. The first thing that I wanted to do was remove the section of wire harness that sits inside the interior trim panels of the hatch and connects to the taillights and hatch release. Since the car's wiring going to the hatch is all part of the greater wiring, I had to remove the section of wiring from the old hatch. On the junkyard hatch I just cut the wires at the hatch so I wouldn't have to pull everything apart while in the junkyard. Now I do have to pull the panels off on the junkyard hatch to pull the cut wiring section out and reinstall the old wiring on this new hatch. I took the time to snap all the retaining clips from the junkyard hatch to get the wiring harness completely removed. Once that was done, I took the car's original wiring, strung it through the opening at the front of the hatch then snapped the connectors in place along the left side of the hatch going up to the rear of the piece. Once there I was able to plug everything up and secure the ground strap. Since the new hatch is missing the cover that contains the hatch release switch, I left the covers off so when I pull the switch cover from the old hatch, I can install the piece on our new hatch. In the meantime, I can move on to starting the fitting of the body panel. I had to trim some of the excess metal from the edges of the panel piece as I test fitted the piece in place. Once I got enough metal trimmed off, I made a few tack welds to hold the piece in place while I tested out how the hatch closed on the piece, since this piece holds the loop that catches the latch on the hatch. The first attempt had the hatch close pretty good but the latch loop was a little to the right, causing the hatch to sit just a little high at the right rear of the piece. I ended up having to cut the tack welds then trim a little material to allow me to reweld the panel in place just a fraction of an inch to the left. Once this was done, the hatch closed smoothly and sat nice and flush. With the panel in place there's a couple mounting brackets that help secure the bottom ends of the taillight mount panel to the body panel. I have to check to see if these bracket pieces will line up where they can be fully bolted back in place. If that goes well, I can then further straighten out the bottom parts of the taillight panels where they will line up evenly with the top of the patch panel. I'll do a few more tack welds to hold these seams then test fit the taillights. Once that's all said and done we can fully weld everything up and finish up the assembly of the rear, which includes the bumper components and the interior panels that were pulled free to allow me to disassemble the body in the beginning. This repair is moving pretty fast so far.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
May 2023
|