PZC2.3: It's Electric!
Saturday's first order of business was a little straightening work on the donor core support. Hammers and wrenches were employed to great utility. 
Then, thanks to the fine folks at a certain purveyor of cheap Chinese tools, the earthly remains of some long-dead dinosaurs were able to be employed in removing the original core support. Since they send me lots of coupons every month, cheap tools are even cheaper than cheap. I present a yet bigger boat:
After several hours of drilling out spot welds with craptastic drill bits and cutting regular welds with a surprisingly not craptastic angle grinder, the mangled metal is half free.
The other side then proceeds to take even longer, as now the drill bits are even duller than how they started. Beyond that, removal proceeded without incident. I'd forgotten how much fun grinders are since I hadn't used one since when I had the Hut as a workshop.
With the welds ground down, the next order of business is the ritual straightening of the frame rails.
How to complete this task? Phase 1: enter the drift.
At long last, a suitable drift. or at least a reasonable facsimile of one. This tool made (relatively) short work of the crunched-up-ness seem on the passenger side frame rail. Further abuse of a crescent wrench brought things to a state of being fairly straight. Checking the fit, however, shows that it only fits because the new core support isn't quite straight.
This was expected, however, as test fits of the bumper (which I can't take pictures of and do at the same time) have suggested that the end of the drivers side frame rail is about 1/2" medial of where it should be. A fix, blessedly, awaits another day and a drier shirt. On a side note, previous entries have not mentioned how awesomely hot it is. These are 3 and 4 shirt days. And that's WITH wringing them out regularly.
The state of affairs at quitting time:
Then, thanks to the fine folks at a certain purveyor of cheap Chinese tools, the earthly remains of some long-dead dinosaurs were able to be employed in removing the original core support. Since they send me lots of coupons every month, cheap tools are even cheaper than cheap. I present a yet bigger boat:
After several hours of drilling out spot welds with craptastic drill bits and cutting regular welds with a surprisingly not craptastic angle grinder, the mangled metal is half free.
The other side then proceeds to take even longer, as now the drill bits are even duller than how they started. Beyond that, removal proceeded without incident. I'd forgotten how much fun grinders are since I hadn't used one since when I had the Hut as a workshop.
With the welds ground down, the next order of business is the ritual straightening of the frame rails.
How to complete this task? Phase 1: enter the drift.
At long last, a suitable drift. or at least a reasonable facsimile of one. This tool made (relatively) short work of the crunched-up-ness seem on the passenger side frame rail. Further abuse of a crescent wrench brought things to a state of being fairly straight. Checking the fit, however, shows that it only fits because the new core support isn't quite straight.
This was expected, however, as test fits of the bumper (which I can't take pictures of and do at the same time) have suggested that the end of the drivers side frame rail is about 1/2" medial of where it should be. A fix, blessedly, awaits another day and a drier shirt. On a side note, previous entries have not mentioned how awesomely hot it is. These are 3 and 4 shirt days. And that's WITH wringing them out regularly.
The state of affairs at quitting time: