Dunched the Zafira again

[lisbon_road]

It is a few years since my wife dunched the Zafira.  This time, the bonnet and slam panel are well bent but surprisingly, the front bumper was ok.  The front cross member is a bit bent and could easily be straightened out - it sort of peeled back when the bonnet was pushed in.  Seen worse.  The slam panel is worse than it looks. 

[lisbon_road]

When I dug a bit deeper, the lpg system has been damaged.  Looks like one of the plastic elbows on the vapouriser has broken off. 

[lisbon_road]

Better get some parts then.  Not as easy to find a Zafira A in a scrapyard now.  Tried Silverlake, GR Harris, Harry Buckland - nothing.  But Richard Noon did have one and that's not far away.  Wrong colour but I'd reached the point that colour isn't an issue - previously I'd always got the right colour because paint is expensive.  Anyway - a clean enough doom blue Zafira gave me two headlights, bonnet, offside wing (old one rusty), front cross panel, cut the slam panel off, and also a steering wheel (old one manky and delaminating), two gas struts (old ones a bit short ebay specials), air bag (old one has new cover, not very good, might just use the cover), endless little bits, and I think that's it for £140 cash no returns. 

[crad]

you'll have a desirable* multicoloured Zafira now, sounds like an upgrade to me

[lisbon_road]

Plan was to cut the slam panel off and weld a new one on.  Seemed a bit odd to me that when I looked at new panels on ebay, there's plenty but they come with a load of other panels attached.  Well the reason is probably because when removing the slam panel, I have to remove quite a strong panel from some pretty weak ones underneath.  The result of that is that the ones under get a bit bent.  In hindsight it might have been simpler to cut across under the slam panel, overlap and join but never mind, I've done it this way and it is done. 

[lisbon_road]

That last picture is a dry run.  I use a spot welder which is really drawing too much current for the domestic circuit but anyway, this is a small job and I soon got it done.  Now after a load of trial alignments, I've taken the bonnet and wing to be painted, which is costing me £250 cash which seems high to me but perhaps I've got out of touch?  I've bought an aerosol to do the slam panel myself to keep the cost down; the bodyshop always prefers not to have a car I find. 

[puddlethumper]

7 minutes ago, crad said:

you'll have a desirable* multicoloured Zafira now, sounds like an upgrade to me

Harlequin ?

[mk2_craig]

Great work so far - 99.8% would have had it over the bridge without a second thought. Kudos for being one of the 0.2%.

[lisbon_road]

7 hours ago, mk2_craig said:

Great work so far - 99.8% would have had it over the bridge without a second thought. Kudos for being one of the 0.2%.

This is autoshite.com after all. Friend told me one of his neighbours scrapped a slightly younger Zaf because they couldn't open one of the doors. 

[GeordieInExile]

6 hours ago, lisbon_road said:

This is autoshite.com after all. Friend told me one of his neighbours scrapped a slightly younger Zaf because they couldn't open one of the doors. 

Not being able to get into it sounds like an improvement as that means you won't then have to actually drive it...

[beko1987]

8 hours ago, lisbon_road said:

This is autoshite.com after all. Friend told me one of his neighbours scrapped a slightly younger Zaf because they couldn't open one of the doors. 

Zafira B? Tatds! I had to re wire the back door looms a few times on the ex's old one. 

Removing the door card from the deadlocked door wasn't fun though... 

[Cavcraft]

Obvs biased, but these are ace cars.

 

£250 for the paint job is pretty good to be fair.

[GregZX]

18 hours ago, lisbon_road said:

That last picture is a dry run.  I use a spot welder which is really drawing too much current for the domestic circuit but anyway, this is a small job and I soon got it done.  Now after a load of trial alignments, I've taken the bonnet and wing to be painted, which is costing me £250 cash which seems high to me but perhaps I've got out of touch?  I've bought an aerosol to do the slam panel myself to keep the cost down; the bodyshop always prefers not to have a car I find. 

£250 for two panels is very decent. My friendly spraypainter is £200 a panel. 

[HMC]

Great work! id probably have left the paint as is, almost as a badge of honour that you were bothered to fix with existing second hand parts rather than scrap.

Isnt that a carbon neutral approach? fix what you got, with the guts of dead cars.

Doesnt look as good a buying a new EV though.

[beko1987]

A funny* sticker saying 'I identify as silver" on the panels'? 

Sure that's never been done before... 

[lisbon_road]

Here's a picture of the panels under the slam panel once the old bent one is cut away.  They got a bit mangled but were ok to straighten out.  

[lisbon_road]

Then the slam panel welded on using my old SIP spot welder that I bought in about 1997.  Don't get to use that everyday.  It does trip the electrics rather a lot.  If I needed to use it much more, perhaps I'd have to do something about that.  

[lisbon_road]

Then cleaned it up and today painted it.  Zinc primer on the bare bits, aerosol primer all over two coats, two coats of top and two coats of lacquer.  I was amazed how well the top coat went on.  I got it from a paint specialist on an industrial estate so I don't know if it is different to Halfords type stuff.  It also looked as if it didn't need the lacquer but I had it so used it.

Makes me wonder what else I could do with an aerosol.  That's the ex Rob_T Astra in the background.

I kinda don't mind doing this - but these jobs soak up so much time.

[lisbon_road]

Got the panels back.  They're ok, definitely good enough for the car, but not exactly perfect.  Hoping to get it all finished on Sunday.  Might be optimistic!

[sierraman]

I absolutely despise every fibre of the Zafira however your work is impressive, I like to see someone doing a professional job. Some good work there! 

[lisbon_road]

11 minutes ago, sierraman said:

I absolutely despise every fibre of the Zafira however your work is impressive, I like to see someone doing a professional job. Some good work there! 

I didn't really like it when we first got it, but I have sort of got used to it.  I appreciate that it doesn't seem to go rusty at all.  I've done work on it, as it has been in two accidents, and the water pump failed when the shaft simply snapped just after we'd got it - made of cheese I guess, plus it eats mass air flow sensors.  But of course being petrol/LPG, there's been no real expensive stuff.  I change the ATF now and then and haven't really changed any ancilliaries.

Trouble is, down south, lpg is soon going to be more or less gone.  That combined with very expensive tax isn't great.  Though it is ULEZ compliant so I reckon I could sell it.  I haven't run the engine up since the accident, so may yet have a little to learn as it was driven back with no water in it and the EML on. 

 

 

[RoverFolkUs]

£140 parts and £250 paint, so £390, wouldn't get you anything as a replacement worth having so you're still winning. Even if you took the scrap value into account, say £300 ish then where are you going to find another automatic family car for less than £700? Top work, even though I'm glad to see the roads' Zafira A population, well, depopulate as time goes on!

[lisbon_road]

It is back together again and I've washed it since this picture was taken.  It has new number plates, some better wheel trims, a new steering wheel, better gas struts.  The last stages of getting it all to line up properly and getting all the plastics clipped back take a while but thankfully when I stripped the scrap car I also took every possible spare plastic clip - never regret that.  It also has a couple of almost new part work Falken tyres which are supposed to be very quiet and do seem to be.  It is also running on gas again as I repaired a broken plastic part and have leak tested the whole thing.

I may yet need to do the head gasket as it was driven back with no water in it - and it really had just a trickle in it.  I really don't like cheap head gasket sets so I have bought the cheapest on ebay, an old stock QH one so I'm ready and some old stock Payen bolts.

Need to align the headlights which I will probably get done at my MOT garage 'between MOTs' for a bit of cash.

The cars ok but I'm exhausted. 

[captain_70s]

Appreciating classic car.