passenger lower door frame

[sam salvator]

Hello,
last weekend my lady almost got into accident and swerved into a curb.
Now the frame below the bottom of the doors pushed in. The doors completly fine, But any ideas of cost to fix before I take to auto body.
my baby just looks so bad I cant stop thinking about it.
Thank you,
Sam

It's raining in cali right now i'll try to get pictures up later.
Thanks

[hockeyman]

Re: passenger lower door frame

Is there any way you can get behind the dent and hammer it out?

Well...first, how bad is the dent??

[sam salvator]

Re: passenger lower door frame

I cant figure out how to upload pictures.
The dent is pretty bad, I dont think it could be hammerd out. It spans the whole length of bottom door (the door is fine just some missing paint chips)
Dents deepest in the middle than gets smaller moving outward.

Will try to upload pictures, would really appreciate advice.
Thanks,
Sam

[sam salvator]

Re: passenger lower door frame

The picture files are to big.

[Fbody3400]

Re: passenger lower door frame

Upload your pictures to imageshack.com or photobucket.com, then post them.

[Loochy88]

Re: passenger lower door frame

you talking about the rocker below the door?

[gugdathug3]

Re: passenger lower door frame

im sorry to hear that. glad no one was injured..

hope all goes well.

P.S. what part of the bay are you from?

[sam salvator]

Re: passenger lower door frame

here's some pics

[sam salvator]

Re: passenger lower door frame

Damn, pictures came out horrible.

Gug i'm all over right now I live in chico. But was born in san mateo.Moved to san bruno then daly city then hayward.
How about you.

[gugdathug3]

Re: passenger lower door frame

haha ive been to all those cities.. but i was born and raised in the south bay.. San Jose, CA. :)

[sam salvator]

Re: passenger lower door frame

could be the rocker, was told by friend it was frame below door and is very expensive to fix. And that I should just sell car and get another.
But she's my first car, had to work damn near two years to get her so that aint happening. I love her too much. Wish I had better pics, because it looks messed up.



Gug I love san jose, It's the spot when there's nothing going on in the west bay/penninsula. Reminds me alot of chico, downtown campus area.Especially on holidays(st. patriks day-fat tuesday.)

[Loochy88]

Re: passenger lower door frame

try to get some better pics

[lordmatt]

Re: passenger lower door frame

Here's my .02

Depending on your experience with basic repair (welding, bondo/fiberglass/etc) you may or may not want to do it yourself.

I'll tell you how a typical shop will do it though, and you can use the information as you see fit. Personally, I had to do it on my car as well, I bought mine totalled and it had a busted-up rocker. The total time for the fix was +-2 hours (but it's work that I'm used to doing).

Anyway, here's how it'll work:

They'll whip out some basic tools:
Sawsall (or angle grinder, personally for this size of job I just used a sawsall and then smoothed/straightened the edges with a grinder)
Chisel (an air-powered tool for breaking spot welds)
Drill with a bit that's the same size as a spot weld
Bondo/fiberglass

They'll go to the local salvage yard and have a rocker cut off a wrecked 'maro. If the damage is along the entire bottom, then they may not need to sawsall anything. (I did because mine was only along the front 1' of the rocker).

Next they'll break all the welds by drilling through the welds (so, in essence, the leftover "weld" is a 1 millimeter ring around a hole where the full weld used to be. It makes the chiseling job easier)

Now they'll take the chisel and break all the welds, so the rocker just falls right off.

After the rocker is off, they'll put the new one in place, line up the front, spot it, line up the back and double-check, then spot it again. If it lines up with the door closed, they'll go ahead and finish welding it down.

Once that part is finished, they'll grind the welds down flat, scrape some bondo or fiberglass over all the welds, block sand it down, and paint.


It's really not that difficult of a process, just very time-consuming.

You can use that info to decide whether you want to attempt the process yourself - at the very least, you might attempt to remove the busted rocker yourself, and go pick up the new rocker. That'll save a good amount on the overall bill. If you're not comfortable enough with your car skills, though, just leave it up to the pro's.

Good luck. ;)

[sam salvator]

Re: passenger lower door frame

Thanks alot for the information. I'm going to give a shot hopefully I get it right I hate taking her into auto shops.
Thanks I'll yall know how it goes.