Header panel

Down in a hole

New Member
Joined
May 21, 2021
Messages
3
Reaction score
0
Location
Brown Co Wisconsin
Hello first post on this forum.
About a year ago I hit a deer on my way into work with my 88 gran fury and smashed the drivers side fender all to hell. I finally decided to replace the fender last week, but now I have a question about the header panel that sits in front of it.

Turns out that thing is held on mainly by 3 nuts on either side in the wheel wells, problem is when I tried to take them off the self tapping screw portion of the stud inside the header panel is what came out and one of the bosses on the passenger side was already broken off. So I reattached the passenger side boss as best I could replaced the fender and tried to put the header panel back on. The passenger side went fine since the original studs were still sticking out of the fender I just reattached them the same as they came off. The new fender however didn’t have any studs since its original car it came from had come apart the it’s supposed to, so I found 3 self tapping screws the same size as the original studs and used those.

Problem is the middle one stripped out once I got it just barely tight, I put the other 2 in but with almost no torque on them for fear of the same thing happening again. So I put the rest of the car back together and I’ve been driving it for a couple days now all seems fine, but I’m still wondering if I should have done more to shore up that panel. I’m worried those screws will back out or that it won’t be supported well enough on just the 2 screws and end up breaking the next time I hit a pothole or something.

What do you guys think? Sorry for the long post thanks.

A52B1D3D-E063-469F-AF07-E9CF9AC82670.jpeg


0AED1E65-99FD-418E-9AA6-223590CA5173.jpeg
 

M_Body_Coupe

Well-Known Member
Joined
Aug 19, 2013
Messages
621
Reaction score
293
Location
Windsor, ON, Canada
Yeah, I feel your pain, went through the same issue when I stripped my coupe down.

Alright, so my fix was:
1) clean all the stuff up, wire-wheel the studs, etc
2) prep some epoxy for the studs to get re-attached to the nose
3) I then used that epoxy to cement the studs firmly back into the nose piece
4) re-assembled the whole darn thing, the studs held up to the normal torque value that size fastener was expected to have (couldn't tell you for the life of me what that was, although the FSM has that listed)

Anyways, you've got that thing back together now, so doing the epoxy thing is going to be a little hard. However, if you were to losen things up you may be able to pull the drive side apart far enough to get the stud into the nose using the epoxy approach.
 

M_Body_Coupe

Well-Known Member
Joined
Aug 19, 2013
Messages
621
Reaction score
293
Location
Windsor, ON, Canada
Yeah, like Mikes5thAve said, any two part will work...that means you mix the epoxy filler with the hardener, sort of like mixing good ol' body filler...just more sophisticated and chemically complex I believe.
 
Back
Top