The hits, literally, just keep on coming. This 2003 Chevrolet Malibu I bought for our younger son has been nothing but trouble almost from the minute I bought it going on three years ago. Bad enough it needed brakes, tires and some front-end work, but between the leaky cooling system, fuel pump failure, emissions issues and electrical gremlins, it's had me at times pulling out what's left of my hair. And the air conditioning still doesn't work.
The best was when it got hit and run in the Walmart parking lot down at Ohio University. I had banged out most of the damage, this looks actually "better" than it did at first, but only a full replacement of the fender would do. He didn't seem to mind the crumpled look of the thing, maybe he thought it looked bohemian, but it was a big irritant to me. I could never take this car to work.
Looking at a good $2,500 body shop tab, I knew it best to scrounge my friendly, neighborhood Pull-A-Part for one since it made no sense to put that kind of money into this car for something that was purely cosmetic. Could I be so lucky to find one in the color I needed? Well, ask and ye shall receive.
It wasn't easy, though. Although there were more than six 1997-2004 silver Chevrolet Malibu's in the Pull-A-Park yard, all of them, save for this one, either had passenger front fenders in equally bad shape, were rusty, scratched to the point it didn't make sense or had already been removed. This one, though, was like a shining beacon. A ray of hope or sunshine on a slate grey, Cleveland afternoon.
Getting it off the car was time consuming but straight forward. Toughest part was finding a working jack because that set of welded together cast iron rims holding the car up was blocking the ten-millimeter bolts that fasten the lower fender to the car's bodyshell. I found one, submerged of course, in the trunk of broken up 1993-2002 Cadillac Eldorado.
You can ask fellow Pull-A-Parters to borrow a tool and most times they oblige; talk about a bohemian existence. But no one had a jack to spare. I felt like I was on an episode of junk yard "Survivor" foraging through wreck after wreck looking for a sacred scissor jack.
I have to imagine moving the welded rims holding these cars up in the air is not something the extremely nonchalant staff at the main gate would care for anyone doing. However, the yard is so big, it would have taken the better part of an hour to walk back and inquire about having someone do it for me. People have to get hurt all the time out here. If not killed.
The hood had to come off because the hood hinges are bolted through the top of the fender, I found removing the passenger door helped me gain access to a couple of bolts behind the fender too. I felt a little bad for hacking through the electrical harness instead of figuring out where it got plugged in under the dash.
All in, perhaps two-and-a-half hours from finding the car to getting this thing off. Factor in search time at the beginning and we're looking at a solid three. I lost maybe twenty minutes looking for that damn jack. So, closer to four and a half hours now that I think about it. Especially if I count from the minute I left my home to the time I got back with my bounty.
Putting the fender on was a relative piece of cake since I had the experience of pulling it off the doner car; I also had all my tools at my disposal. I found I didn't need to pull the door off; I was able to get to the bolts inside the fender just fine.
The wife was less than happy that I spent the afternoon of New Year's Eve wrenching on the wretched Malibu but afterwards we went to dinner, came home, watched Sex and the City, tried to watch the ball drop (we actually missed it by thirty seconds or so) and went to bed. All in, if you ask me, a pretty decent way to spend the last hours of 2021. Although, when I reconnected the battery and went for a test drive, I noticed the check engine light was on.
The hits just keep on coming. Happy New Year.
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