Some of you may be aware that I managed to reverse my Elite into the garage door about a week ago. I'd only had it for a week, was lovingly putting it back on the driveway having just replaced the nearside rear light that had a crack in it and had just rewired the tow bar electrics. Backed it on to the drive and the front wheels held on the kerb. Feathered the throttle slightly to get the front wheels over the kerb, did it too much and before I could catch the brake I'd reshaped my rear wing, bumper and garage door to boot.
The Garage door was a right mess, and had to be removed, bashed flat again and strengthened with as many odd and sod screws as I could find. It opens and closes although I think its got a finite life from here on in. The rear wing, however is another matter.
Thanks To Chris, who sold me the bumper from my old Omega which he is now breaking, and Ronnie has promised me a tail light he's found in his shed. I ordered a slide hammer, and a hammer and dolly kit from Ebay last week for a repectable £30 inc postage and set about in the evenings this week bashing the sh!t out of it to try and straighten it. Happy to say that although I'm a complete amateur, its getting there. Its gone from this:
To this:
Still a fairly long way to go, there's one dent just behind the bottom of the arch which I can't get out for love nor money and I've tried all sort of steel bars to help. Waiting on a "Ding King" to turn up this week which will hopefully pop the last one out and get rid of the slight bowing further back (according to a man in the know who looked at it yesterday for me). I know its not going to be perfect, but I'm fairly happy with the results so far. Next on the menu is to remove some of the smaller dings that I couldn't see before test spraying. I'm waiting for a random orbital sander to turn up this week so I can start filling and sanding to get the rest of the shape back.
My theory is that I'll coat it with as much filler primer as it will hold and then use the orbital sander to key it back into shape.
As for the bumper, well the bottom half is now the correct colour since I picked up the right colour can this time and I've finished filling the scrapes that were on the old central insert which I'll use again. Just waiting for some filler primer to dry, a soft rub down and that will be ready for spraying, so I'm hopeful that by next weekend the bumper should be pretty much ready.
Roll on next weekend.
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Topic: Operation reverse c0ck up (literally) (Read 4116 times)