You learn something new every day. Tonight, I was poring over some factory service manual (FSM) pages on GalantVR4.org generously shared by a member in the UK. They detailed the panel replacement procedures for much of the front clip on a Galant of 195′s vintage. Excellent stuff! Locations of factory spot welds which have to be broken in order to remove damaged panels and details of where and how to weld replacement bits into place for a sound repair. It’s good stuff. I love being a member of that community.
See the thicker, sort of square beam pointing up and down in the picture above? At first glance, one might think to call that a frame rail. Considering the Galant is a unibody car, it has no frame, per se, so it has no rails. What, then, is that thing called? I knew it wasn’t a frame rail, so I put it in quotes when I shared these pictures with the members of the Galant board. After reading through the aforementioned FSM pages, I came to learn that these are called “sidemembers.”
They present me with a bit of concern, as, for some reason, I hadn’t notice this until just tonight, but the sidemembers on 195 are mega-tweaked just behind the core support. (The FSM calls it a “headlight support,” but I had to get this hunk of aluminum in order to mount the radiator core, so I’m sticking to my guns on this one.) Here’s a picture of what I’ve got going on just behind the support. It’s actually a drawing, since my Blackberry takes really crappy pictures of dark, dirty things in dark, dirty locations.
Fortunately, these sidemembers are pretty much hollow, so I’m hoping I can do a really good job of measuring and cutting for a perfect match between new and old bits. For now, the plan will be to insert a section of pipe of some sort into the existing member, then weld it into place before resting the new section on the same pipe and doing the same. Then I figure we can weld a gusset of some sort across the seam to button things up securely.
With the DSM Shootout barely three weeks away, I really hope I can overcome my loathing of this joke of a rainy season we have every year and devote some more time to getting 195 back on the road before V and I catch our flight. I know it probably won’t happen, but it’s a nice thought.
In the glovebox:
Working Credo
