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Old 03-12-2016, 04:54 PM
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BodhiBenz1987 BodhiBenz1987 is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: East Coast
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OK, hopefully I've got it now ...
Anyhow, here's the shock tower. The design of the tower made this pretty difficult to remove and replace. There are two layers to the area where the shock mounts ... a smaller, highly contoured 14-gauge piece that mounts on the inside of the larger 14-gauge section that is spot welded to the 20-gauge wheel well steel. The rust looks like a small spot, but had permeated into both 14-gauge sections as well as the outer 20 gauge.


Structurally it felt strong because there was a lot of solid metal there. However, just putting a patch on would have left a lot of rust still between the two 14 gauge pieces which would have just gotten worse.
From inside:

With some metal cut away


So, a big ugly mess. It's also designed in a manner that it's very hard to cut apart without destroying more of the area than was damaged in the first place. I cut a huge section out of Hanno's parts car, and then took it home to carefully remove the part I wanted. I decided just to remove the top portion of the shock tower panel, as the bottom half goes all the way down to the floor of the car, is enclosed on the inside by the boxed part of the panel that runs along the side of the trunk. You really have to look at it to have an idea what I'm talking about, or cut one apart. So I cut along the line right above the bracing in the trunk, and then drilled out each spot weld on the 20 gauge surrounding the top of the panel.

(to be continued ...)
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