Last week I was involved in a pile-up on the interstate. It seemed like a hard hit, but my airbags didn't go off and the car didn't look too bad:



Anyways, I ended up buying a new vehicle with the intention of fixing the Maxima when I had the time. With my experience with past Hondas with similar damage that I have repaired, I expected to need the obvious parts and new bumper beam and bumper supports. In Hondas, the bumper supports are replaceable too, and since my frame rail is still straight, I thought this would be the case.
Well, I partially disassembled the car today, and found this:



It seems the bumper beam support is welded in?? And in my car it is smashed. I'm pretty bummed because I was expecting the parts that were smashed to be replaceable, and now I see it is welded in to the frame, or part of it at least.
Has anyone here repaired a Maxima themselves with similar damage like mine?
I am thinking of either using my new truck to yank real hard on it by leaving the bumper beam attached and chaining it up to my truck while strapping the rear tow hooks of the Max to a pole, or just try to reinstall the bumper beam with lots of shims. What do you guys think?

I don't want to part the car out and it's in too good of condition to give up on it

 

Thats rough man, but I would think you could have the bumper and radiator supports fixed relatively easily by a bodyshop.

 

Yeah a bodyshop would have a pretty easy time fixing this kind of damage. But, here in the Northwest it seems everybody charges premium prices, and our bodyshops are always busy in the winter months. I'm thinking that a body shop would want $3K to fix my car including repaint the affected areas. Last year it was sideswiped and that minor damage was $1800 to fix (paid by the person who hit me).
I'd like to save money on the labor, get her straight again and pay to have the car repainted in the front by the same shop that did my car a year ago. Hopefully that'd only be like $1K or so..

The good news is my radiator support is undamaged and the car doesn't have that rusting radiator support problem yet.

 

Order the part, drill out the spot welds and have a buddy or shop weld in the new part.
The rest is just bolt on stuff you can easily do yourself.
Easy fix, you just have to know the right people.

 

Doesn't look to bad, have a shop see how much. They can perhaps pull it out or see if you can "diy" the damage.

 

i just want to add that ive done something similar
with a hand held power pulley wench also called a " come along "
one end hooked to chain on my trucks tow bar
and the other end hooked to chain on my smashed tail light frame
i also kinda pulled a van back into shape for someone like this

its alot more control than using the moving vehicle
but i was scared of it breaking and flying since the amount of
force involved must have been crazy

 

That's a good trick I've used on cars with slightly smashed radiator support. I fixed a Legend that way, we strapped the car to a i-beam, and attached a come-along to another i-beam and attached that come-along to the front end of the Legend and pulled the front clip straight. I left all the parts on the Legend until everything was lined up perfectly, then we replaced all the smashed parts. When done, the car didn't look like it had been in an accident. That's the way body shops do it also.

My co-worker is going to loan some nylon straps used for cargo container lifting and a come-along and I'll try it with the come-along first, if that doesn't do it, I'll unleash 4LO on it! Nylon straps won't rip away like cables or chains, if the nylon or the mounting points give out, nylon won't whiplash.

 

waiting until i get home, work has the pic blocked