Front end damage, radiator position

[E36notMine]

My son cracked up the front end of his e36, probably looking at his phone and not the road. But that’s a whole other problem.

anyways, the damage didn’t look that bad. The car he hit had no damage, so I don’t think he was moving too fast on impact

Bumper, nose panel, radiator support, radiator, and passenger side bumper shock was only visible impact. Hood and fenders look fine.

Picked up some used, and some new parts and started the reassemble. Problem I’m having, even with the new radiator support ( saw the donor car it came from) the radiator is making contact with the fan. Either the engine moved forward, or the radiator moved back. Or the fan grew ( bent). But end result, looks like we still have a problem. Any guesses where I went wrong? Thanks!

[amancuso]

Are you sure you have all the right parts and or the donor was accident free?

[E36notMine]

I can’t say for sure if the donor was ever in an accident, but it looked perfect when I stopped in to see him pull the radiator support off - the bumper and nose panel and grills were 100%.

thinking about this some more, when we started tearing ours down, even though the radiator support looked straight and undamaged, because the fan was up against the radiator, I assumed I needed to replace the support. But with the new one in there, radiator is still touching the fan, same as it was. Which makes me think perhaps there is some slop in the motor mounts, and the motor crept forward after he locked up the brakes. Is that even possible ? Or maybe the water pump shaft bent? Those are my two guesses this morning - and seriously considering a ‘fan delete’ kit until I get this figured out. Do those work? This car has had minor cooling issues since we purchased, so a little worried about driving around with only the pusher fan.

[E36notMine]

Well at least I know for sure what the problem was - both motor mounts were broken into two pieces, and the motor was sitting about two inches ahead of where it belongs. I have the new mounts bolted with the bottom bolts, and the motor hanging from the ‘cherry picker’ hoist. But want I can’t seem to do is get the motor to move back two inches, to line up with the top studs on the mounts. Anybody fight this battle before, and win? Thanks !

[gc325is]

A motor is attached to a transmission then drive shaft.. they would have move up too but maybe not back 2 inches. Check how they are attached.

[zellamay]

My memory is vague on this: the driveshaft has a spline just in front of the giubo. If that slid to allow the engine to come forward, it should be inspected. There's a cap with wax? in it that is cheap to replace.

[dworthy]

+1

Loosen the trans cross mount and then the large nut on the driveshaft to push the motor back. Inspect the transmission mounts as well, for those are made out of rubber and could be busted too.

[E36notMine]

Motor is finally back where it belongs - you were right, the two transmission mounts were gone too - the transmission had dropped down a bit when the motor moved forward, and it was hanging up when trying to push the motor back. Once I jacked the tranny up, everything dropped back into place. The new motor mounts are bolted in, now I need to take care of the transmission mounts. Those seem like a pain to do with the car on jackstands?

[dworthy]

If you have a big belly like I do, then it can be tight. However it's pretty straight forward, just a couple of 10mm on top of the mounts, and they slide out, and then the 4 for the actual trans mounting bracket.