Slam Panel Bumper Headlight Removal HOW TO GUIDE

[jay-vtr]

As some of you will be aware, I bought a car with light front end damage (amongst other damage lol) and I needed to replace the slam panel:



Replacing the slam panel fixed the following problems:

- bonnet closes and opens smoothly
- lights now line up
- bonnet now has even gaps on either side
- front bumper can now be mounted straight

For anyone wanting to know how to remove a slam panel this guide may be useful to you. This guide may also be useful if you are planning on removing your bumper or your headlights as both are covered.

My slam panel had been spot welded at the bottom instead of bolted in, which is probably the stupidest repair I have seen in my life ever, also some muppet decided to stop the bumper from hanging he should put a screw through the inner wing into the bumper:



Step one:

Finding a new slam panel. – After a short search I found one at a local scrap yard which was very lucky because I could see it before I bought it to make sure it was straight and not badly corroded like the ones on eBay.



There’s mine on my bed lol

Step two:

Removing the old slam panel. – It sounds easy and simple but first of all we need to remove the headlights.



The headlights are mounted onto the slam panel and are fitted by three separate bolts, one at the top, one at the side and one underneath hidden behind the small body panel connected to the light itself.



Once all of the bolts are un-done you will need to remove the four cables at the back of each unit, once this is done the light can move freely so be careful because they may fall out and smash.



You may be lucky enough like me to be able to remove the lights without removing the bumper first but if not then skip ahead to the section explaining how to remove the bumper.

Step three:

Removing the PAS reservoir

This is connected to the slam panel and the 10mm nut can be removed and the bracket comes off, rest the PAS reservoir out of the way while you are working in and around the slam panel:

Removing the air flow induction, this is mounted by three 10mm bolts which are very easy to remove, the air flow pipe is flexible and can be moved out of the way of the slam panel (be careful of the radiator)

The radiator is held into place by two spring clips at the top and these can just be pulled up to unclip the radiator, the radiator will stay in place because it is held in at the bottom by some rubber mounts.

Removing the bonnet catch is easy; two 13mm bolts hold it on and once it is removed the two clips retaining the cable can be removed.

Step four:

Removing the bumper for better access to the slam panel:



This is a hard one to explain but please see the other guide on here because it explains it far better than I can.

Step five:

Now the bumper is removed the slam panel is held in by 6 bolts, two 13mm at the top next to the wings, two 10mm underneath where the lights were housed and 2 10mm bolts connecting the lower panel to the slam panel (or in my case, two very shoddy spot welds)

Heres the lovely welds on mine! How stupid, previous owner couldn’t afford to buy bolts







Undo all of these bolts and remove the slam panel from the vehicle.



You are now left with a massive great gap of where it used to be, find a new slam panel and follow each 5steps backwards until you have a complete car again!

























Have fun  Jay-VTR

I also had to make other repairs to the vehicle, The slam panel was not the only bent panel:

Play spot the difference with these two images lol