Looks great!

 

Hey friends,

Finishing touches can often be the hardest part. I'm trying to get these old screws off from the grille area and the nuts seem essentially fused to the screws going through there. I've sprayed them on both sides with Deep Creep for days. I've put a vise grip on one side and an impact driver in reverse on the other as well as tried by hand with a ratchet. Nothing seems to snap these nuts behind the grille loose. Any ideas?

Also, lining up a bumper, looks like I've got some work to do on the support brackets where the 4 bolts go. There are pretty out of whack. I'm thinking sledgehammer? Or some sort of pry bar? They don't seem to have much play even with the bolts loosened and the donor vehicle they were nice and flat and straight (I may have a photo of it).

The final challenge is going to be the radiator support bar. Mine was bent up pretty bad and I straightened it but not quite enough to line up all 4 bolt holes. I think I'm going to remove one of the lower bolts to try and get the middle 2 aligned to the tie bar, then try and pull the lower left side over enough to get that 4th bolt in.

Any thoughts are welcome to those who have done this before. Sometimes the post-crash alignment of parts is tougher than the mechanical work itself it seems.

Photos:

 

I decided to table the grille and get to work on the main part of the Durango today, getting things tightened up under the hood and the headlight back on which will lead hopefully to the bumper.

Still a couple tough screws (one on the radiator support bar and one on the fan cover right side) not quite lining up, but things are overall tight though you hate not being able to put a screw in a hole due to alignment.

Here's where I am stuck again. The passenger headlight took the bad part of the deer hit. I've got a generously donated replacement light here which is great and both the turn signals illuminate and work when I plug them in. However, the two bulbs, headlight and what I guess is called the running or parking light bulb (tiny bulb) do not illuminate on the passenger side. Wiring from what I see looks good (though perhaps there's a connection elsewhere I am missing). HIGH beams work well (though I saw some smoke coming off the bulb so I quickly turned them off). The smaller bulb would not light regardless. Engine is off (just using battery). Driver's side lights all fine, low and high beam. I have tried replacement bulbs and 3 headlight bulbs, all 3, only the HIGH beam works and not the low beam.

Any thoughts on this one? Once I can get the low beam working, I will mount the replacement headlight then be moving on to the bumper and fog lamps. Will tackle the grille last as it seems the current hardware may be on there with a loctite or similar glue and that's why I can't separate the nut from the threads, and it's turning as one piece, and I'm unsure how to break that bond at the moment.

So, headlight problem first, then bumper alignment.

 

Do you have a service manual for it? I don't know if the switch supplies power, or ground, to control that circuit.... Dodge was kinda wishy-washy about that, and it changed over the years. Sometimes, mid model-year.....

 

thanks for the reply. I only have the owners manual and not the service manual. So it looks like I am on my own and figuring this one out. I did the usual checking of the connections that I could get to and everything looks solid so I can’t help but wonder if the crash blew a fuse or a switch that controls just this aspect of the system.

I don’t have a lot of spare parts to swap in and out but will keep trying to see what I can find. I was hoping that the symptom of just those low beams being out on that one side pointed to something as I figured if both low beams were out we were looking at a switch or fuse issue. But not much shocks me with this Durango anymore. It could be that a single fuse or switch controls just the passenger side low beams for all I know.

 

See if the wiring got damaged. Sometimes breaks can occur but you wont see it in the insulator jacket. Use an ohm meter or test light and test each wire. For things to line up.... Drill some holes and pull with a slap hammer. Come-along for the big stuff, or a chain and a big tree.

 

See if you can get wiring diagrams from here.

 

Found what looks to be the wiring diagram, so thanks. Lots of wiring that seems isolated to just one low beam so something new I will now need to learn at some point is how to read a wiring diagram as well as how much of the car I will need to again take apart to get to an isolated wire that could be broken to control the low beam on the passenger side.

Since that idea was daunting, I decided to move on and just see how far I can get with the rest of the physical stuff. Bumper and grille. I first installed the headlight back on for the first time ever, with the faulty low beam in place. Then on to the bumper.

Here's where I get frustrated. The donor bumper obviously was on very straight, and the brackets below it (which I left behind) were also straight. both my attachment brackets are very, very crooked. See photos to see the issue. I attempted to use a steel crowbar to bend these to no avail. They do have screws that loosen, which does not allow for adjustment, but makes me wonder if I need to return to the donor vehicle to remove these brackets as well (not sure if they came with the bumper and I left them behind by mistake, or if they are considered something else). Also, I'm actually sort of unsure if they are what's bent or if it's the steel frame they are attached to that is bent. Regardless, I am stuck here -- I lined up the passenger side fairly well and put in one of the 4 screws, and you can see how far off I am from lining up the drivers side. I'm not sure what to do next. I did take some photos to show the progress.

Grille - I've gotten no further with the grille other than to contemplate if I need to get some sort of cutting tool and remove the screw posts by cutting them off of the hood. I am also wondering if a lock washer and nut on the outside held by a wrench would work while hitting the inside bolt with an impact, however, I believe the impact may just turn the outside nut loose as well. Stumped here as well.

As always any suggestions anyone has are welcome. The best right now I can come up with is to return to the pull yard (one hour away) for the frame bracket bumper parts and hope they line up better, and to literally cut out the hood posts and attempt to find new fasteners to replace those I had to ruin.


(ABOVE, MOSTLY LINED UP, PASSENGER SIDE)

|
(ABOVE - NOT LINED UP, DRIVERS SIDE)

 

Well hello, my most excellent friends and a happy thanksgiving to you all. I have again made progress! And I will remind you all we are now 25 months post accident. Has it been that long?

With some more careful coaxing with my vise grips and ratchet, was finally able to get the old grille screws out and use them to rebuild the grille from salvage with mounts from the old/accident grille. Thanks to some good youtubers with videos on how to use jb-weld ( ) and some care, I was able to rebuild and replace the grille. Really happy how that turned out.

The bumper was another story. I did notice that the bumper mounts had play both horizontally and vertically, 2 horizontal screws, 2 vertical, on each bumper mount bracket (hope I got that term right). I also noticed one bracket had torn the frame out on the passenger side (it thankfully still mounts up tight due to the washer being large enough). The frame has some decent rust on it so it makes sense how this happened.

When I realized there was no way the bumper was lining up with the vertical screws tight, I loosened them up enough to allow the mount clips to move. Then with a TON of effort by myself (would be easier with help) did manage to get all 4 horizontal screws in (I still need to go under the truck to tighten the 4 veritcal, as well as push the bumper UP as it looks to be sagging too low in the middle now and needs up an inch. I assume that is a normal thing and why these clips have some adjustment in them but let me know if I am doing anything dangerous. Here's a photo I tried to take of the clip on the passenger side with the vertical screws where the frame tore. And some photos of course of the process to fix the grille as well as how she looks right now with the bumper at least ON (4 horizontal screws only).

The headlight remains an issue as well, as do the fog lamps (believe I just need new bulbs, have not connected them back up just yet). I've attached the headlight wiring diagram (hoping not a copyright issue) in case anyone can make heads or tails, that said, I do not know how much I want to take apart just to get at a potential wire that may be causing the low beam not to ignite on the passenger (I assume left?) side...unless it's a slam dunk definite.

Any thoughts welcome as always, my heroes. You guys are the reason this thing is not in a junkyard!

 

Passenger side is the right side. Side is determined by sitting in the drivers seat.

It looks like the ground is behind the headlight somewhere. I would assume on the radiator support, and likely right close to the headlamp housing itself. Probably just a stud sticking out somewhere, with a couple wires on it. Might be on the inner fender as well.