Hi guys (and some girls )

I am in the process of taking apart my front end (of the body) for "Mulderizing" my AP1 headlights. I bought my 2003 B/B beauty from Carmax in March, who assured me it had never seen a track, or any sort of wreck. (ha!)

So, as I am taking off the bumper and headlight assemblies, I notice a lot of my bolts are rusted (wtf?) and some don't even match left-to-right (!) I was about to chock this up to odd Japanese engineering, when I saw that, on the passenger side, there are bends in some of the metal pieces that make up the body, as if it took a shock from underneath the car.

These bends have a tad bit of rust on them. Also, much to my alarm, I am MISSING the bolt #5 in figure 8 of Rick's headlight removal procedures! Someone for sure has taken this car apart, for some reason, and replaced the headlights, forgetting to put back in bolt #5!

Needless to say I am pissed. I'm wondering what you pros would do in this scenario. I couldn't afford to buy an S2K new, so some of this is what I expected. But, I did NOT expect body damage with a clean Carfax!

I will post pix soon to clarify the rust and the damage.

Thoughts?

 

Here are some Pix:

Bolt's Aplenty, some Honda, some ???


Damage to the fender "hole" in the body frame that supports the fender:


Damage to the BOTTOM of the radiator frame, ???

 

Damn, that sucks. Are all the VIN stickers present on the front fenders, hood, and bumper? I see some signs of over spray in the 2nd picture. Do you have the original CarFax printout from before you purchased the car? Doesn't car fax off some kind of reimbursement if there is frame damage to the car that didn't show up on the car fax? Talk to Car Max and see what they can do.

I guess the lesson here is to never trust what a used car salesman says. They know about as much about the car's history as you do, sometimes less. If the previous owner fixed the damage of the vehicle independently, it usually won't show up on a car fax. I have a friend that has and Integra that was wrecked 3 times, none of them show up on a car fax.

It took me four months for me to find my perfect S2000.

Good luck with everything and let us know how it turns out!

 

Thanks Chino. I'll have my Mech Engy friend look at the pictures and determine if it's even worth rocking the boat. The damage is minor (the pictures are very close up)

Right now I'm worried about the bolts, which would be easier to fix. I wonder if I can just buy a bag of them from Honda, for less than $1M

 

OEM fasteners prices are funny. Some bolts less than $1 each while some can cost several dollars each.

 

Never fully take Carfax' word on anything. They only show you what is listed in DMV records (which you can usually get for free btw). So if the previous owner crashed his car and didn't report it to dmv or Insurance company then it wouldn't show up on record....Sux to hear man