Bent & dented A-pillar repair write up.

Well I finally got serious about my Heep again. October '05 was when this damage occurred when I flopped in Moab on Pritchett's "Rocker Knocker".



Of all the damage done to the 'ol girl in '05, this was the repair I was most dreading. The pillar moved inward about one full inch and back into the door about 1/4". You can see where the inner trim piece is touching the dash pad. I'm no body guy, so I did some asking around before I tore into it. Most said to just pull it and fill the dents but I hate working with Bondo. A few others said skin the outter part with a straight piece, so that's what I did.

I know several others have done this kind of damage, so I figured I'd post up some pics of what I did to get this fixed.

After removing the smashed windshield, this is what the pillar looked like. Yeah, I had a spotlight mounted to it and that's part of what caused the damage when the Heep laid over. The shaft of the light kinda twisted the pillar as it laid over on it.



First was to harvest a good pilar from a donor. I torched one out of a parts XJ I had before taking it to the scrapper:



Then I proceded to drill out the spot welds on the inside of the door sill, and then cut about 1/2" down into the windshield channel. The top I trimmed as close to the rain gutter pinch seam as I could, and the bottom I cut below the bend where the fender meets the pillar. Here's the donor piece removed and ready.



I don't have a pic of the removal of the damaged pillar skin, but I simply repeated the process as above, except that I trimmed right at the bend line of the windshield channel side, and left about 1/4" of metal at the top and bottom ends to give a lip to weld to. The door sill side was done the same - just drilled out the spot welds.

I decided to remove the damaged skin before bending the pillar back out into shape because it seemed logical to me that the pillar would move easier. It seemed to work. Here you see my redneck heritage shining through..... come-a-long anchored to the tree in the front yard.... Unfortunately, the roll cage kept me from being able to remove the interior plastic trim from the pillar so it got tweaked and cracked.



Here's where it is after this afternoon's efforts. The pillar is pulled, the windshield channel and door sill areas were manually bent and straightened to accept the donor pillar skin as a "lay over" fit. Here it has been pressed into place and the new door hung to check overall fit and gaps.





I must say, I'm fairly impressed with myself with how it's turned out so far. I've never delved into body repair, much less making replacement pieces fit. Tomorrow I'll buzz the paint off the surfaces and get it tacked into place, check fit again, then finish weld it all up. I'll post pics of tomorrow's progress .... well tomorrow! :thumbup:

Looks good Troy!

not bad, man. I love redneck engineering...:farmer:

damn good work man.

right on right on.

Nice work Troy that came out damn good
.................

Nicely done. That's a tough repair to do well, I know, I tried it.

--ron

That is truly impressive work! I can't wait to see the finished product.

I have attempted that repair once upon a time and I must say that your results are worlds ahead of mine.

here was my variation of the redneck frame puller setup:



:laugh:

I must be the only one that thinks a Porta-Power is the tool for this kinda job.



--ron

Captain Ron said:

I must be the only one that thinks a Porta-Power is the tool for this kinda job.



--ron

Click to expand...

I also used a 60inch high lift from the upper a pillar corner to the door sill...


No access to a porta power; gotta run with what you got...

WTF: Your damage certainly is worse than mine! Dayum, that'd suck! Did you fix it or cut all that pesky sheet metal away in favor of tube?

Capt. Ron: I'd have loved to use a porta power, but I couldn't figure out a way to mount it inside the XJ where it would push correctly - without bending something else. I don't have anything better than the tree to anchor to so I had to make due. With all your new machinery and large shop, I'm waiting for you to post up that you whittled yourself a completely new XJ!

Here comes today's progress report.......

I cleaned all the surfaces in prep for welding. I then put the new piece in place and tacked it in 3 places. I then used a small ball peen hammer to get the gaps closed up: (Like the nifty crack/tear at the bottom of the channel? I did my best to put a small bead on that as well.)



After that, I got busy doing the spot welds: (Not all the spots turned out this nice - In the future, I'll probably swap out the wire from .030 to .025 to help minimize burn thru. I had a few places that really tried my tallent.)

The windshield channel:



The door sill:



After starting on the spot welds, I realized I forgot to drill holes at the top of the pillar piece. These aren't optimal, but worked out ok.





Here it is, all welded in place, cleaned up, hand sanded and some filler at the top to conceal the overlap: (I drove all over the place looking for seam sealer but couldn't find any. Paint shops are a long way from my place. Since this repair will likely outlast the Heep anyway, I'm not gonna worry about it. But if I were doing this for a DD, I'd definitely seam seal.)





While waiting for the filler to dry, I got busy on the replacement door, sanding down the jambs and spraying on the color. I got pretty lucky with a close match. The Heep is MAACO "Corvette Yellow" and those jerks wouldn't sell me any paint. So, Krylon's "Sun Yellow" turned out to be a good compromise. I sprayed half of the old pillar with the new paint and it's really hard to see the difference.



Tomorrow, I'll sand the filler, flip the door and sand the outside, then paint everything up. The windshield guy comes Monday :thumbup:

All that work and you know the next rock you pass is gonna want to grab it.

LOL - yeah, I'm gonna be paranoid of the driver's side for a while.... But it beats paying someone else to do this stuff. So far, I'm into this repair a whole $46 for paint and materials. The windshield will add another $100. The door was free!

Let's just say I won't be doing any more "rocker knocker" grade off camber climbs without an anchor strap anytime soon...... :shiver:

Why'd you even bother with it at all?

Where I live, I have to pass emissions in order to renew my registration. In order to pass inspection, I have to drive it there and the windshield all smashed up just isn't legal. Plus, the wife isn't into buggies or open jeeps, gotta have protection from the elements.....

So, it gets fixed in order to put a windshield in it and keep the gov't happy as well..... Plus, I'm enjoying learning this stuff!

Believe me, I'm as fed up with this whole emissions b.s. as everyone else who has a trail only rig, drives less than 500 miles a year with it, and still has to comply with the bureacracy...... gets really old.

What is this Emissions Testing of which you speak?

Kiss my arse Frank........

Well it's done. Everything is painted and the door is hung.

The cowl structure beneath the fender and door is pretty tweaked. It's also cracked from several nose-up winch pulls so nothing lines up all that great. But considering the abuse my rig has taken, this turned out pretty good.



Not bad for having sprayed it with a rattle can..... :thumbup: The flash makes it so much lighter than seeing it with the eye. It'll be interesting to see it in the sun after washing the rest of the Heep.



Now I gotta figure out how to fix this........ Anyone have any suggestions on how to pull this back out?

I've seen repairs done with a pin welder and a slide hammer. Check your favorite tool rental joint, you might be able to find one that has a screw tip that you screw into the metal.

Frank Z said:

What is this Emissions Testing of which you speak?

Click to expand...

What he said - move south, young man, move south...