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Frame Straightening

Leadfoot21

Leadfoot21

Red Skull Member
Joined
Mar 27, 2021
Member Number
3723
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501
Any of our members here do body work and frame straightening for a living ?

Picked up a 21 equinox from a family member and need a professional opinion . Thing drives perfect just needs the RF inner fender structure and the RF frame horn is bent a bit .
 
Leadfoot21 said:
Grew up that way and thought about it but I believe this is a bit more than that lol
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So be careful with the winch.

With nothing more than a come along and a $100 body polling hook set I've pulled two cars out good enough to make all the shit fit and the panel gaps decent. If you're not going for perfection you'll be fine.
 
Because needs a fender and bumper . There currently isn’t one .
 
See below .
 

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I would like it to align within limited tire wear and the fender gaps look right . I got it for a song so I don’t want to spend too much on it and kill my excitement 😂 has 21k miles.
 
If my memory is right the frame rail on those are a high strength steal and repairing them can be tricky. From the looks of your pictures the actual frame rail looks to be repairable. It looks like it may have just pushed it over some and not actually buckled it anywhere. So it would just need pulled back over. Find some holes back behind any of the damage and cross measure to the front of both frame rails and that will tell you if the front is out of square.

As for the fender apron it's hard to tell in the pictures but it also looks repairable but if not you can buy one online and put it in pretty easily.

Your biggest cost is probably going to be for your headlight it looks like that one has the LED headlights and they are around $1200 from gm. You might have some luck with finding one on ebay but I would go for a used one over aftermarket. The aftermarket ones don't seem to last as long as oem.

If you have any more questions I'll do my best to answer.
 
86k5 said:
If my memory is right the frame rail on those are a high strength steal and repairing them can be tricky. From the looks of your pictures the actual frame rail looks to be repairable. It looks like it may have just pushed it over some and not actually buckled it anywhere. So it would just need pulled back over. Find some holes back behind any of the damage and cross measure to the front of both frame rails and that will tell you if the front is out of square.

As for the fender apron it's hard to tell in the pictures but it also looks repairable but if not you can buy one online and put it in pretty easily.

Your biggest cost is probably going to be for your headlight it looks like that one has the LED headlights and they are around $1200 from gm. You might have some luck with finding one on ebay but I would go for a used one over aftermarket. The aftermarket ones don't seem to last as long as oem.

If you have any more questions I'll do my best to answer.
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Thanks for the response ! I might try to pull on it tomorrow but there are limited areas to grab on the area that bent on the frame rail . They aligned it the closest they could and while it drives fine it’s still off . I figured I could pay someone to pull it and do the rest myself but can’t even get a call back from anyone so far .
 
If you are going to try and pull it yourself look at getting some frame clamps. You can get some cheap ones on Amazon that are decent. Something like this Amazon.com
Your going to have a hard time keeping the car from moving though without having it clamped to a frame rack.

Most body shops don't like doing partial repairs because they don't make as much money on it. Also to fix it they will need the parts to make sure everything fits
 
86k5 said:
If you are going to try and pull it yourself look at getting some frame clamps. You can get some cheap ones on Amazon that are decent. Something like this Amazon.com
Your going to have a hard time keeping the car from moving though without having it clamped to a frame rack.

Most body shops don't like doing partial repairs because they don't make as much money on it. Also to fix it they will need the parts to make sure everything fits
Click to expand...
Yeah I have ran a frame rack a time or two . Unfortunately the one I have access to I cannot use . I thought about mimicking a rack by placing jack stands and tying it off to something before pulling .

Yeah I found the fender, bumper, HL on car-part local for a fair price and figured as much . Career tech here and in auto game since I was a kiddo just I’m a cheap ass and now it’s for me.
 
Looks good, how'd you do it?



Last car I straightened out, I used a turnbuckle chain binder, some heat and some hammering
 
Squamch said:
How'd ya do it?
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I didn’t 😂
Projectjunkie said:
Looks good, how'd you do it?



Last car I straightened out, I used a turnbuckle chain binder, some heat and some hammering
Click to expand...
See above 🤣.

I bought some frame clamps and a few other things . Went outside one day to really tear into it and realized the frame was bent worse than I thought , so was the fender structure .

Drove it over to a body shop a family friend used to own . The ex co-owner now sole owner was still there to my surprise , super nice guy . I tell him the story and my budget and he gives me two quotes one pulled and “id never know the difference “ and one “ new frame rail and everything done per manufacturer recommendation” . Both prices were damn good… so good I saw no way I could pass it up.

That said parts are out of control ! Salvage yard cost was 90% of new , they will not budge ! Ended up buying all new parts after an order was way more damaged than was mentioned to me when purchasing . The refunded me and we ordered from GM.

Without making this longer than I have to it was going to cost me $3k in parts used or a couple hundred more for new parts .. opted for new and told them to make everything right . IMO they went above and beyond and after a couple surprises still came within budget all in at $4.6k purchase price of $2.5k . We’re happy as can be , fresh oil change , window tint and a quick detail and the wife will have a new h-whip .
 
Leadfoot21 said:
I didn’t 😂

See above 🤣.

I bought some frame clamps and a few other things . Went outside one day to really tear into it and realized the frame was bent worse than I thought , so was the fender structure .

Drove it over to a body shop a family friend used to own . The ex co-owner now sole owner was still there to my surprise , super nice guy . I tell him the story and my budget and he gives me two quotes one pulled and “id never know the difference “ and one “ new frame rail and everything done per manufacturer recommendation” . Both prices were damn good… so good I saw no way I could pass it up.

That said parts are out of control ! Salvage yard cost was 90% of new , they will not budge ! Ended up buying all new parts after an order was way more damaged than was mentioned to me when purchasing . The refunded me and we ordered from GM.

Without making this longer than I have to it was going to cost me $3k in parts used or a couple hundred more for new parts .. opted for new and told them to make everything right . IMO they went above and beyond and after a couple surprises still came within budget all in at $4.6k purchase price of $2.5k . We’re happy as can be , fresh oil change , window tint and a quick detail and the wife will have a new h-whip .
Click to expand...
That's cheap. I got a quote to paint a truck cab and it was more than that.
 
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