Board Thread:Watercooler 2.0/@comment-6191693-20131230040409/@comment-6191693-20140421024807

As promised, I come bearing stories of a new calamity. It was unrelated to any of the events detailed in my last OOC post, as Pav insinuated it would be, but it happened shortly after he called it nonetheless. I'll preface this by saying that GM (who made Pontiac) never takes a straightforward approach to vehicle design.

I was in the garage working on my Pontiac project (after getting mad at it and putting off touching it for way longer than I should have) and trying to disassemble the front end (hood, both fenders, and bumper cover are all damaged and will need to be repaired or replaced). I thought I could get the fenders first, since they were the ones that most needed looking at to determine whether they needed replacing or just repairing, but the hood hinges are bolted through the tops of the fenders. The hood has those little piston things instead of a prop rod to hold it up and I didn't want to mess with them, so I figured I'd leave the hinges attached to the hood and just pull them from the fenders. I undid the bolts and another inaccessible bolt seemed to be getting stuck on the inside of the fender, meaning (so I thought) I couldn't pull it off until the fender had been either loosened or removed, so that's what I did: I couldn't quite figure out how to remove it all the way, but I loosened the fender enough for that hood hinge bolt to clear it.

I had the hood propped up with a yard stick jammed inside the latch and some rags stuffed under the rear edge to keep it from sliding back and breaking the windshield when it came loose. As I'm tugging on it, assuming it was held in place by rust/corrosion, the top of the passenger side fender suddenly rose up like the Loch Ness Monster, the hood twisted oddly, the yard stick slipped, and the hood came crashing down onto my head. And this isn't a little hood. It's an 80+ pound Grand Prix hood. Fucking ow.

Not only had the car tried to eat my head, but I looked to see my even-more-mangled fender and discovered that the hinge is not actually bolted to the fender. Those bolts I had undone bolted through the hinge and fender to attach the latter to the subframe. What held the hinge to the fender was not bolts but fucking welds. THE HINGES ARE WELDED TO THE FENDERS! GOD DAMN YOU, GM!

So then, with my massive, heavy hood flopping around like a limp dong attached tenuously to the loosened fenders and propped up by questionable yard stick, I had to remove the pistons that were holding it up and put all of my faith in that ever-more-wavering yard stick, then remove the hinges from the hood. I got three out with no problem. The fourth one, though, as soon as it was nearly out (but not all the way), the hood rotated quickly and violently and closed on my head again. I'm not entirely sure how I got that fourth bolt the rest of the way out or how I manouvered that hood, which is bigger than I am, off of the car and into the corner of my garage.

I never did figure out how to get the fenders the rest of the way off. I'm still angry about that.