Project Rolla, Minor Panel Bashing

One of the first things that annoyed me was that the car has had a small bump in the LH front corner. Nothing major, but it had pushed the grille, grille panel and headlight out of alignment with the bonnet.

It bugged, me, so I set to work fixing it.

Stupidly I didn’t get a good photo of the alignment beforehand, but you can kinda see it here

So, to fix it, I made it worse

And using a combination of hammers, pliers and other bendy bashy things, I ended up with something that looked like this

It’s not perfect, not much is on a 22 year old car with 260+k on the clock, but it’s far better than it was. The panel almost aligns with the bonnet now, and since the headlight is bolted to that grille panel, the headlight is now pointing straight

Speaking of headlights, whoever decided they should be secured to the car with these bloody things is an arse and should be flogged mercilessly.

What they should look like this is

But of course, the metal bolt rusts into the metal insert, causing the thin sheet metal that the clip attaches to, to slice into the only thing stopping it spinning, and suddenly you have a free-spinning bolt you cannot undo. What an arse.

I ended up using a 14mm Irwin bolt grip to bite into the plastic piece and hold it so I could undo the bolt. I replaced then with a washer and standard nut instead.

Getting there. The car doesn’t look like a derp now, so that’s a big win in my books.