DIY MAZDA AUTO BODY REPAIR

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Jun 30, 2014
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DFW,Tx.
I was in fender bender a month ago which banged up the front of my Protege. After watching Arthur Tussik on youtube, I decided to do the repairs myself. I had to repair the raidiator support with individual pieces from Mazda. The hood,bumper cover, bumper reinforcement I got from Certifit. The lower rails and upper fenders were not bent. I did have to pull out a frame web with a slide hammer vise grip. I think it came out ok even though it took some work to get the aftermarket body parts to line up.

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The hood had to be replaced. The radiator support on this car had terrible spot welds. I decided it could be repaired just as well with screws and self locking nuts. It is a big lie in the auto body repair business that spot welds are better fasteners. The main reason they use spot welds in car frames has to to due with LABOR COST.
 
This isn't a nice job, this is a fantastic job. I'm very impressed. I'm more of a mechanical kind of guy, body work just doesn't sit well with me.

Regarding body shop work, well a had a fender bender about 9 months ago, I was rear ended and pushed into the car in front of me. Everything was repaired and it looked good, but I started poking around later on when changing oil and found several connectors not secured, the outside temp sensor was just sitting on top of the plastic cover and recently I started hearing a rattle from the front whenever there is a strong headwind or if I drive above 75-80 mph. Perhaps I should take more interest in body work.
 
I'm am still going around and around with an insurance claim on this. Insurance would no doubt want to total the car. I was keeping my distance from the car in front of me. Then everybody slammed on their brakes and an SUV in the lane next to me swerved into my lane to keep from rear ending a car in their lane. Needless to say I couldn't brake or swerve fast enough to avoid hitting the trailer hitch on the back of this SUV. Anyway, I took the car to several body shops and they all wanted $4000+ to repair the vehicle. Every one of them wanted to replace the entire radiator support. I was lucky to find out that Mazda sells individual pieces for the radiator support. It cost a little more for these individual pieces, but I didn't have to disassemble the entire front end of the car. I decided to fix it myself because almost every body shop I have ever dealt with leaves out hardware or a poor job of reassembling the car. The underside of the hood and repair pieces were painted with Rustolem enamel. The upper side of the hood and bumper cover got sprayed with Duplicolor and a clear coat. Total cost for all the parts and hardware was less than $750.
 
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