I was looking over a Honda Odyssey that was a few years old, and noticed a few things that were amiss in the engine bay. The first thing I noticed was that the cover for the PCM was missing, and then that the wiring harnesses weren’t clipped into their holders right, and the coolant expansion tank wasn’t properly secured. My first thought was the timing belt had been replaced, but it was way before the mileage when that’s needed, and it didn’t look like the engine had been touched.
It didn’t take long to figure out why this stuff had been messed with. The car had been in an accident and damaged in the right front to the extent of needing the structure replaced. Wherever they got the work done probably shouldn’t be doing collision repair, because it is not very well done.
The welds are ugly and lumpy, which they then tried to hide by grinding them down, and in some spots you can see bits of filler wire from not having the welding gun positioned well. There are also a lot of rust spots in the areas that they welded, which shows that their paint job wasn’t very good either.
Besides the bad repair, there was also this spot where the wrinkles in the original metal were still there, when this area probably should’ve been replaced too. I had one of our body shop guys take a look at it, and he said that while it is poor quality work, it’s not unsafe.
And of course, the fender was replaced, and didn’t fit very well, with irregular gaps.
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-Dan
Mechanical Malarkey 