Down in a hole
New Member
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.
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.