Alright, so on Jan 5th or so my dad said that if I could fix the car that I could have it for 700 bucks. Here is a picture of what it looked like at the time:
Here was my dilemma, I was not living in Boise, i was 5 hours east of there in a small town called Rexburg, but my in-laws have a house in boise and my Brother lived on the Oregon-idaho border (this is where the envoy was stored). So in order to get the car I would need to tow it to my in-laws, fix it up in one weekend and then drive it back to rexburg. the scary part was that nobody had opened the hood since the wreck, so I had no idea what was wrong with it.
Here is a picture of after I stripped the body panels off and you can see the supports that are totally bent.
To straighten these supports my father-in-law hooked his little s-10 pickup to it with a chain and we tugged on it until it was about the same as the other side ( I know this is totally redneck, but I didn't have a come along or proper tools to do any better.)
After everything was straight I realized that the radiator was busted, so I replaced that with one I got at the junkyard for 80 bucks.
I checked all the fluid levels and then started it up to see how it would run, It was running great, but then I noticed a loud hissing sound coming from under the vehicle, so I looked under and realized that there was ATF spraying everywhere! Upon further inspection I noticed that the cooler line had been resting on the Cat converter and there was a small hole in the line, so I cut out that portion clamped a hose on there.
Next I went back to the same junkyard and found an entire envoy sitting there that was the same exact color as mine, so I got the hood, fender, grill and header panel from them! (my bumper was still good and I didn't want the headlight on theirs because it was a bit cloudy. Here is a shot after I got all the new panels on:
So that was the end of the first weekend! (crazy that I was able to do all that in 2 days)
I drove it 5 hours back to Rexburg with the one headlight and then when I got there I spent the next few days stripping everything off again so that I could get to the wiring and spend more time spacing the hood lines and door gaps. I am not a professional, but I am happy with the way it turned out. i had to replace a wiper fluid motor, but not much else was damaged.
The last thing I had to do was get a headlight, which I picked up from a junkyard here locally (it even had working hi and lo beam bulbs in it!) It was unfortunately pretty discolored as you can see
Last but not least I was able to take the headlight into the dealership I work at and have them buff the lense to make it match the other one pretty well. Here is the only shot i have taken after doing that.
So that has been my project from Jan 24th when I towed it to my inlaws, til today, not bad for just a couple of weeks huh? Thanks for your support and any comments or suggestions are more than welcome. I plan to lift the truck once my tires go bad and to put a spacer in with a more aggressive tread. I want to tint the windows and add a few LED's here and there. I hope you liked my first post.
