Updates At Bottom

If you have a real passion for something, and put everything you got into it, you try your best to take care of it, anyway you can. Sometimes though, bad things happen, and are unavoidable. Unfortunately, my Buick has seen it's share of bad things, from light damage, to some pretty heavy damage.

Two major things happened to this car when the original owner had it – first, it was severely rear-ended, but since the car was new at that time, the whole back end was completely repaired. Later, it wound up in a flood, but that was taken care of pretty quickly. Since I bought the car, I've done everything I could to try and keep anything nasty happening to it, but no matter how hard I tried, two things did happen to this car.

On this page, I discuss the two incidents (which thankfully, really weren't that bad) that have happened to this LeSabre since I've had it, and the progress I have made to make the repairs.

The first incident involved me going off the road and hitting a fence. On December 13, 2005 (a Tuesday), I went out to get some gas for the car. Instead of heading back home the way I came, I decided to take a longer way home, a country road through the hills. Everything was fine, until I started coming around this one turn – I was already going slow because I knew that turn was there, but before I knew it, the car started to slide, and without even having enough time to react, the car pulled a 180, slid into a ditch, and bounced up into a fence (fortunately, it was good that I went towards that fence, because the other side of the road led down a hill, to a cliff with a patch of trees below – if I went that way, I probably wouldn't be around to type this). The culprit: cinders just dumped onto the road, on a turn, no less.

The front end of the car was badly damaged: the front bumper was bent upwards, my amber fog lights were obliterated, the hood latch was practically destroyed, the lower piece of the air dam was broken. That was all I noticed after I wrecked. When I got home, I found out the the exhaust was also damaged.

It did not help that I had developed the flu, and was in bed for almost a week. After I got better, I couldn't even look at the car. My brother jumped in and said that we could fix it, so in the freezing cold, in a matter of 2 days, without spending a single penny, we fixed most of the damage to the front end.

I don't have any pictures of what it looked like after I wrecked, but I have a few pictures of some of the damage that was left after we made the repairs.

On the left is the fence that I hit, and on the right is the lower piece on the air being held up by wire ties:

We found that the right side exhaust hanger was bent, so the exhaust pointed to the passenger side of the car, and the passenger side exhaust tip (old Borla tip) was badly bent:

The remaining damage to the front bumper, it was originally pushed upwards, and bent inwards (the left picture has the crack, and notice the chrome piece, badly messed up – on the right picture, I originally thought that was damage, but later found out it was just dirt):

On the left is a wider view of the front bumper, and the how the exhaust looked after the wreck:

It was pretty bad looking originally, but like I said my brother and I were able to fix most of it. The bumper mounts were bent upwards (good old 2x4 and hammer fixed that), the hood latch was squashed (fixed same way as bumper mounts), and the radiator is bent, but not broken. The bumper was cracked and bent pretty bad, but we took it to the basement, warmed it up (which caused it to go back to it's original shape), and plastic welded some of the cracks. There is still some visible damage, such as the hood is bent on the passenger side (which I don't have a picture of yet), the driver fender needs repainted now (but not an issue – see below), the lower air dam piece is destroyed (but easily replaced), the amber fog lights have been obliterated, and the driver side front door sags a little now.

I was bummed about it at first, but I've put so much hard work into this car, that I wasn't going to let a wreck stop me. I figure, as long as the body isn't badly damaged, it can be fixed (that didn't even stop my brother after he totaled his 95 Dakota, he completely rebuilt that truck). I'm still upset that it happened, but I'm happy that it wasn't worse. Since then, I've hardly taken this car on any road that is not a city road or interstate.

If that wasn't enough, almost exactly one year later, I discovered pretty big (at least I think so) damage to the car. December 5, 2006 (note, Tuesday again, one week from the wreck of the previous year), I go out to my car (which is parked one street up from the house), and I see some stuff lying in the street, which I thought was a glass bottle. I then look up, and see my side marker is destroyed. Now, at this point, I'm mad, but I didn't think it was too bad as I had replacements. I then come around to the side, and I see this massive hole in my fender. I am beyond furious at this point. So, I call the police, they make a report, chalked it up as a hit and run, then left. Said they'd let me know if anything came up. I wasn't expecting anything. Below are pictures:

Later that month, I did get out to the junkyard to look for a replacement fender, but it came off a maroon '93 LeSabre. So, I need to get the fender repainted, and then transfer my portholes.

To this day, I still have that damaged fender, but that is because I decided not to replace it right now, because I will just wait to repaint it when I get around to having the whole car repainted (because I also want to replace the hood, since it was damaged in the wreck, and I figure it is just going to be easier that way, instead of repainting those pieces and trying to to blend to match the faded paint of the rest of the car).

Above, you just read the two major incidents that happened to the car. Now, everything below this paragraph is describing the repair progress (which is still going on to this day), because I plan not to have to add anything else above, ever.

As I mentioned about the fender, I did get a replacement. But so far, all I've managed to do for it is prep it for painting:

This project is on hold until I get the money for a complete repaint of the car.

The wreck caused a lot of damage, and most of the severe damage has been fixed. The front bumper mentioned above, and the exhaust, which has a new hanger, and new tips (tips found on page 3). What I still need to replace is the front bumper and hood, which were both damaged, but not severely. I also need to replace the radiator, as it became bent, but it isn't cracked or leaking, so I'm in no hurry on that fix.

While I was adding the LeSabre Limited fender trim, I decided to replace the damaged chrome piece on the front bumper:

Here is a couple pictures comparing the destroyed piece to the replacement piece:

And, here is a shot with the replacement piece installed:

At least all the trim looks better now.

As I make repairs, I will add them to this page (and hopefully no more damage pictures!!).

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Windshield Damage:

Ha, I wish what I said above would hold true, but I don't get that kind of luck. I tell ya, I am royally pissed right now. I was on my way home this afternoon (10.23.08), and in the other lane was this city truck. He was moving, extremely fast, too fast for comfort in something that big, and he was also partly on my side of the road. Well, I get over a little to avoid him, and as he flies by, big rocks are flying out from the back of this truck. Two of them hit the car: one on the hood, and the other against the windshield. Well, I looked to try and find damage, but couldn't see any. But, by time I get home, this is what I see on the bottom middle of my windshield:

A nice crack in my windshield. Now, it doesn't look too bad in these pictures, but this thing has grown in size since I took the pictures. This couldn't have come at a worse time. I have absolutely no money right now to even attempt to fix it (the bank is crawling up my rear end about my lack of funds in my bank account, so that doesn't help). I'm going have to ride this out, and hope it doesn't get worse once winter hits (I've been driving this more, even with the engine problems, mainly because I can't keep up with the cost of gas for my Bonneville, plus it needs new tires as well). Just liability insurance on this car, so it's not gonna be fixed by them. Gonna have to find some time to get to the junkyard when I have money and get another windshield (they are a pain to remove without breaking). I'm glad this didn't happen in the Bonneville; that's an expensive windshield in that car.

I've had this car for 8 years, and managed to keep anything from happening to the windshield. I was planning on replacing it down the road, eventually. I just didn't plan for it this soon. Well, I'll post updates when I can take care of this.

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UPDATE 6.29.09 -- Even More Damage

Well, the unfortunate happened -- my Buick has been damaged even further:

I was at a friend's place Saturday night (06.27.09) for a cookout, and long story short, his wife, when taking her 10-12 year old cousins (3 of them) home, she accidentally backed her Jeep Liberty into the front of my car.  She didn't realize it was there (and I don't blame her with 3 hyper girls in the back seat -- that'd drive anyone nuts).  I told her not to worry about it, as I needed a replacement hood anyway (from the wreck in 2005).

I managed to pop the grill back out, but the hood still looks terrible.  I'm going to have to leave the driver's headlight out now, because with the hood bent, it's pushing up against the glass of the headlight, and I don't want it broken.  Not much of an issue anyway, as recently, my headlights quit working, so I have to troubleshoot that issue as well.  Someday, I hope all of this ends.

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Page 1 – Introduction
Page 2 – Stock
Page 3 – Performance Mods
Page 4 – Exterior Mods
Page 5 – Interior Mods
Page 6 – Sound Setup
Page 7 – Exterior Lighting
Page 8 – Videos
Page 9 – Location Shoots
Page 10 – Future Modifications
Page 11 – Damage Information
Page 12 – Installation Information
Page 13 – Old Mods - Coming Soon!