Hello,
I was reading through the earlier posts. I am sure there are ways to do it with lasers and plumb bobs, but I have a professional Porsche 911 Metal Shop and I went all in with Celette repair benches and fixtures. I repaired early 911s on jack stands as a teenager and in my early twenties, so I can fully appreciate what a Celette offers.
I have a great example I can show you. Someone wanted to build a $200-300k hot rod, but wanted the body checked before investing all of that money in it. It was stripped down, so it loaded onto the Celette easily. The issues were easy to see.
The torsion tube mounted well, it was "true" but the rear was pushed over. There was also noticeable damage to one of the rear bumper mounting brackets where the impact was taken. The quarter panel somehow seemed unharmed, but it was 4-5 years ago, so I don't remember it perfectly, but I do have pictures I can show.
Issues to look for in photos:
-Replacement front pan was installed at some point, but didn't fit the Celette, very common, I find most front pans done without a Celette never fit a Celette (stoddard makes a front end jig, but I have noticed in front end collisions, the two rear mounting points (4 total for both sides) for the front suspension get pushed back, the jig aligns off of the back mounting points, so if this front end only jig is used after a collison, the front pan will go in misaligned. I have custom made pulling equipment to correct damage that pushes back the front suspension mounting points. The farthest back I have ever corrected is about 3/4'', any more and the damage is usually too severe and a new floor area and inner fender work is usually required)
-The rocker panels didn't fit the rocker panel jig, I think the car took a hit on the left side at some point, maybe a different collision than the one that bent the rear. That side of the car just didn't fit and I think I remember noticing funky welds on the outer rocker and thinking "yup, that's not going to fit, get that out of there or we can't mount the car."
-Rear shock towers are pushed over, I believe to the right, that's from the hit to the rear. Either the car got hit or it spun and crashed into something. The bumper took the impact and transferred that energy throughout the rear end. One other thing to add about this location is that I have noticed it is not very precise, I notice a lot of variance in this location with "perfect" cars. My guess is there was a lot of tolerance given there at the factory when the car was produced because precision at this location isn't very crucial, it just holds a shock.
-Rear engine mounts are pushed over even more than the shock towers, again from the rear end collision. The jigs didn't align with the engine mounts. If correcting, pulls would be performed until that engine mount jig fit perfectly in the engine mount. The rear end is often pushed up or down as well, so the pull has to be done in three dimensions, not just left or right. I use a pulling dozer along with a bunch of smaller hydraulics in cases like that. Nothing is ever very straight forward with pulling, it's kind of an art and a creative can do attitude is key. Things are often worse than they first appear.
I ended up not repairing that car, but my diagnosis was crucial to their decision making process.
Feel free to ask questions or ask me to clarify anything. There are a lot of pictures on my website as well,
www.rungeeleven.com
I also post on instagram here and there, some more random "in process" or whenever I feel like posting pictures, search for "rungeeleven"
Facebook too, but that's linked to my instagram, so it's the same content.
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