cheap body repair and paint?

What makes you think the deer was being offensive? Who ran into whom?

Jeff

I fully anticipate attacks from it's kinfolk.

Any auto repair may be tempting fate.

Perhaps using a rubber mallet to hammer out dents may be good enough for you, or call local scrapyards for a used part. Try using Texaco Compound L rustproofing. It's a petroleum based product that does not tend to dry out, crack, and attract moisture creating rust. It's consistency is of a heavy grease that you can spray or paint on if you thin using mineral spirits. I've been using it for many years with great results. Nothing really kills rust once the oxidization process has begun. You can only slow it to a crawl and in some instances stop it's advancement by removing it's exposure to the atmosphere using what I mentioned. Rustproofing is especially effective on the areas of metal that are tightly pinched together, such as a spot welded seam. That is where rust is likely to begin.

Forget about expensive rust removers, use a can coca-cola to kill that rust.

Guess you didn't see a recent "mythbusters" in which they tried Coke on a lot of applications and found only that it's a pretty good chrome polish....not much more.

For an '88, for body parts, you're going to have to go to junkyards. You don't say where you live, but if you can get parts from North Carolina, Texas, Arizona, etc they would last for a while.

You can try Certi-Fit, but I doubt they have parts for this car. Maybe headlights and taillights...

A repair tech I spoke to today said he could get an "after market" hood for this car for $100+. He indicated he would be able to get a tailgate but I didn't quiz him on the price on the tailgate.

He said they were primer black so I suppose they would be unused.

It may be a solution for me to get the hood and do things a piece at a time.

This plan would be contingent on the price for the after market tailgate.

I live in West Virginia.

What do you think?

If you go with the aftermarket parts, make sure that they check to see that the hem and seams are caulked.

Find a new hood in a wrecking yard is your best bet. You can beat the old one back into shape, but to get it 'right' and flat enough to look good will take an experienced body man (metal shrinking and stretching and delicate hammer and dolly work) a Whole Lotta Time, and that time is expensive. Even with plastic filler it will either take way too long and/or the end results will disappoint.

If you get really lucky the paint color will match, but plan on it not matching and painting the hood when you get it - with proper paint materials and preparation, you can drape off an area with plastic and paint the hood yourself. Or do the prep & priming work yourself, and pay a pro $100-ish to shoot the color coats for you.

Read The Instructions On the Paint, and follow the advice of the auto paint shop that mixes it for you - they know the right prep steps to take, the right primers to use, how to thin them and the right thinner for the weather, spray gun techniques, etc.

Not hard, just a lot of subtleties in getting great results. When they say to practice your gun techniques a bit before shooting the hood for real, they aren't kidding. It's easier to put on multiple light coats correctly than to slop it on and have to sand out all the drips and runs.

(They aren't going to sell you any of the exotic aerospace paints that will rip up your lungs even with a powered air-supply respirator system - I hope. Another good reason to read the instructions.)

If you live in rust country, find a hood in a non-rust area and make a Road Trip to go pick it up.

If the rest of the car isn't bent (just the hood) the easiest way to get the new hood home in one piece and no dents is to drive the Corolla down there, and arrange for the wrecking yard to scrap the old hood.

Bolt the new hood onto the hinges (6 - 8 bolts) and drive home - close it very gently till you're sure it's aligned at the hinges, fender gaps and at the latch striker, so you don't tweak the new hood on the first slam. And be sure to adjust the rubber bumper bolts in the front corners and the latch properly so the hood isn't vibrating or flexing as you drive, it doesn't take much to get fatigue cracks.

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OK, thanks Ray.

Hey Bruce,

I'm not one to do any part of the repair myself and I'm not one to do the road trip. Thats just me.

If I do anything it would probably be to go with after market parts suggested by the tech. Although I'm still in the planning stages.

I may talk to a couple local junk yards to see if they have anything or have a pipeline to anything.

Thanks Bruce.

Those parts are alright for an older car. They are generally thinner than OEM, and usually made in Taiwan, and not rust proofed. It takes a little more effort than OEM, but it should suffice.

GAAH! You Top Posting Fool!

You said the "M" word! ;)

just curious, what would be the value of an 88 corolla?

That would be my second suggestion - they have replacement aftermarket hoods readily available at reasonable prices, but the metal is a bit thinner and they aren't rustproofed at all, just a simple coat of black primer.

The local body shop can prep, prime again and paint it to match the car for not too much, then you take a half-day to install and adjust it.

You can order from a junkyard out of state, but the cost of crating up a hood for shipping and then shipping it will eat up your savings. You might get lucky and have a under 100-mile road trip, it's worth that much effort to save $100.

And DO NOT throw out any old under-hood body parts without copying down the information on the instruction stickers for future reference. Emissions information, fan belt routing, air conditioning service instructions, lots of important information. Most of those stickers are on the radiator support, but there might be a few on the hood.

First thing I'd do is take close-up pictures of the stickers, print and laminate the photos, and stick one set of them in the glovebox, the other set in the file with the title slip at home. I'll bet you can order new replacement stickers if you have the part numbers from the old ones - and it's printed in the corner...

If you want to get top value when selling the car, replace the stickers - because missing stickers scream "major body damage", even if it wasn't /that/ bad and you took the time to get it fixed properly.

Depends on the area and the condition of the body, of course - in the rust belt it turns worthless a whole lot faster, since body cancer in any car (body on chassis or Unit-body) turns into terminal swayback after a while.

Like "Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo", with Buddy Hackett sitting in the back seat with an Oxy-Acetylene Torch frantically trying to weld it all back together ... ;-)

(Your Logical side is screaming "That can't work!" and your Philosophical side is responding with "Fuhgeddaboudit, it's only a movie gag, and it's funny...")

Even if the body looks like heck, as long as any car or light truck runs and drives properly and passes smog, and promises to do so for a while, it's always worth at least $500 for basic transportation. Anything above that is based on condition.

And in areas with no rust, and an 88 Corolla in nice shape and not too many miles, you'd be shocked. I wouldn't be too surprised to see it go for $2,000 for real nice condition and $3,500 - $5,000 for pristine.

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Mine still turns heads. I get people who want to buy it walk up to me on the street. Certainly not the auto body tech who wants my money. State tax dept tells me they don't lose their value (of course). The FX body type is unique too.

How is the deer? Doh! a deer, wham.