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Here are some pictures of the car after Maine 2000, mostly crashed.
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Datsun 510 after Maine 2000Oliver rolled the car at the Maine SCCA ProRally on the second day. He entered a right hand turn, caught the driver's front wheel in a rut and flipped the car over, landing on it's wheels. They were unhurt although we now call Oliver "the evil car-crashing mother-f*cker". The car was PRISTINE before he crashed it, it had run one event with Nick Hoen driving, and had a fresh paint job. Pretty much every panel on the car was either hit or is wavy from induced stress from the roof pillars. To briefly itemize the damage:
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Datsun 510 fender after Maine
A closeup of the passenger front fender. The car came down hard on
this corner, it ripped the fender partially away and damaged the
radiator mount and the inner fender reinforcement.
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Datsun 510 side view
View of the passenger side. The front section of the rear quarter has
a bunch of bondo where it appears that the rocker area was sectioned.
Overall, not too bad, we just wacked it with a rubber hammer.
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Datsun 510 shock towerA closeup of the passenger side inner fenderwell and shock tower. Not only did the non structural upper part get pushed in, but the actual shock tower reinforcement (not visible) got punched, and the inner fenderwell reinforcement (also not visible) was bent.
Luckily, the car seems to be made from recycled Foster's cans, so it
yielded quite well to the 20# sledge.
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Datsun 510 A-PillarCloseup view of the driver's side A-pillar and window damage. The front roll bar side brace follows the A-pillar here, the pillar was punched inward towards the brace, although this isn't really visible in the picture. This was actually the hardest part of the car to fix; meaning we couldn't do it. I did make a clamp for the porta-power and pushed it around a bit using an I-beam inside the car to push against, but I could only push it up away from the door sill/B-pillar torque box. I couldn't push it outward (away from the windshield) due to interference from the roll cage and nothing to push against on the other side. You can't push against the cage, turns out the A-pillar is much stronger than the cage brace anyway.
We brought it down to a Chevy dealer in St. Agathe de Monts, PQ and
they used a tower puller and fixed it quite nicely.
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Datsun 510 side view
Yet another view of the damaged passenger side. Note the lack of seats.
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Datsun 510 work beginsView of the passenger side with fender removed. Note the upper inner fender well reinforcement, it's got a nasty kink in it. This is after some careful work with the 20# sledge to reshape the inner fenderwell. Also note the lack of a windshield. A small sledge that we call "Thor" (a 4# engineer's hammer) took care of that.
The car in the background is the Golf rustbucket rally car, in need of
much MIG welding.
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Datsun 510 inner fender reinforcementAnother view of the passenger side inner fenderwell reinforcement. This is after many exploratory wacks with "Thor". This area is double walled and hitting doesn't really do any good.
Note the fuel line oh so carefully capped off in the fenderwell. The
location of this stupid thing actually prevented them from driving
away from the roll due to a pinched fuel line.
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Datsun 510 fender repaired
This is the crunched fender after about 30 minutes of bodywork. The
cage builder (Ken Burt) told us to do a front clip, but I decided that
we didn't actually need any body panels, so I beat them into
submission.
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Datsun 510 inner fender reinforcement removedWell, it became obvious that I couldn't reshape the fender/shock tower area with the reinforcement in place, so I removed it. I used an air hammer to split the spot welds which was REALLY LOUD. I'm supprised the neighbors didn't call the police since we were doing this in a trendy idle-rich neighborhood in West Hartford, CT maybe a two minute walk from the Governer's mansion.
It was crude, and a few mistakes needed some MIG-filling but it
worked. It also killed my $15 chinese air hammer. You can see the
toe of the porta-power being used to lift the front of the fenderwell
area.
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Datsun 510 repair
A bad picture of the repaired inner fenderwell.
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Datsun 510 inner fenderwell repairIt's at night, it's raining and the car is on the trailer. After reshaping the upper longitudinal reinforcement piece, the inner fenderwell, and the shock tower reinforcement, I MIG-spotted the piece back on after punching holes in the seam of the reinforcement with a pneumatic panel crimper/puncher. The big black mark on the reinforcement is from the oxy-acetylene torch I used to straighten the piece with "Thor" and a vice.
Then I slathered seam sealer over the weld seam, that's the vaguely
purple stuff. At that point, both I and the neighbors were sick of
the car so Oliver dragged it up to St. Agathe de Monts, PQ where
people are more accepting of this sort of bullshit.
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Datsun 510 leaving West Hartford
A view from the front, at night, while raining, on the trailer. Note
the weird depth of field effect, the inner fenderwell reinforcement is
visible in the upper left corner of the picture, it's actually more
than three feet long, but the angle and the flash have flattened it
out.
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Datsun 510 leaving
Another view while on the trailer at night in the rain. You can even
see our POS tow vehicle.
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