I wanted to know from someone whos actually done it before. How hard is it to put a new radiator core support in and weld it all together? I'm not worried about taking all the parts off to get it cut out and all but the actual installing part. Mine is messed up and it bothers me. car was wrecked and body shop that fixed it did a half *** job, and just used bondo to make it look like nothing happened. i dont even think they pulled the frame, so now i have to have it pulled. i just bought the car so i dont know the story behind the damage it once had.

anyone have pics? do i need to go buy a parts car to get a core support? anyone have one?

thanks

 

if you had asked sooner i coulda got you one from a parts car we just got rid of.

as for the core support. find a parts car and disasemble the whole front end. and get a drill and a mess of very sharp bits and start drilling all the spot welds that hold it to the rest of the unibody. this will take a VERY long time to do.

then repeat to your car. and get it on a frame machine and be certin that everything else is pulled to spec before you weld the new support in. when you do be certin to weld only at the holes that you drilled the factory spot welds out. they did that for a reason, so the car can break away in a colision.

i've done this work before, its very, very time consumeing.

 

thanks for the advice, i found a car that i;m going to go take a look at today, not a parts car but thats what im going to use it for. 89 RS with a 350 TPI and tranny. i could use a bunch of the parts it has, black interior and all. i'll part the rest out when im done with it.

thanks again
Jerry

 

i was quoted 500 for a replacement. parts and labor. buddy that painted my car said he would pull strait my stock one for free, cause he didnt wanna deal with it. big mess apparently. the car was tore to pieces for painting, so it wasnt like he had to take the car apart, it was already bare.....

 

called up cambird, my local fbody junk yard and he can get me a new core support for 40-50 bucks, a reproduction one. I never knew he was able to get them until i saw a friends 92 Z who bought one from him and installed it himself. going to head over tomorrow and see if i can find an origional complete front end with frame rails and all. I dont quite know how much of my front end is out of wack,

all i know is that my rad support is bent along with my front pass lower frame rail, so i'm going to try and get that too. everything i could possibly need i can get from there.

 

it is going to be 10 times cheaper to get what you have pulled out.
to weld on a new front end, or just the core support and frame rail, it will be almost cheaper to buy another car.
i would see if they cant salvage whats on your car, IMO
good luck.

 

theres plenty of times when repairing the existing rad support is not possable from a safetys standpoint. if it needs replaceing it needs to get it. otherwise it will be a weak point in the whole car and make any other wrecke th ecar may get into quite worse then if it had been replaced.