Can You Rebuild a Wrecked Car in Your Back Yard?

This is a wrecked car and this is me trying to repair it in my backyard which might not be the best idea. You see a while back I found out that you can purchase pretty much any car you want for a fraction of its usual price if you go through an insurance auction. There's only one catch, you have to fix it. This is a really affordable way to buy some of the coolest cars ever made but I don't have enough money to buy even a wrecked supercar. So we're going to start off this experiment with something more in my price range. This piece of garbage. But that doesn't mean it's going to be any less work. Getting this thing back on the road and 100% operational took multiple months. There were so many things wrong with it and I was all but forced to get creative with some repairs. But I'm getting ahead of myself because the first step to fixing any wrecked car is finding one to fix. There's a bunch of different insurance auction websites out there but the one I went with is called Copart and it didn't take long for me to find this, a 2007 Hyundai Tiburon. Now these aren't necessarily the most revered cars out there but a Tiburon is actually what my first car was back when I was 16 years old and technically also the first car of mine to have gone viral since it was what I was driving in a semi-popular gif my friend and I made about 12 years ago. So I kind of have a soft spot for them. But besides sentimentality it was also super cheap. I was able to snag this one for only $700. Though I can already tell it's going to cost a lot more in time to get this thing fixed up. So once I got home with the car the first matter of business was giving this thing a thorough cleaning to remove all the filth as well as the copious amounts of what looks like chocolate sprinkles though I'm pretty sure is mouse poop. Yeah that's definitely mouse. So with all the broken front end panels off the car, the fenders, headlights, bumper, I can pretty much tell right away that there's a lot wrong with it beyond just cosmetic issues. So unfortunately this is not going to be as simple as just swapping on some new panels. As for the inside that actually looks pretty good apart from a few areas. But apparently the wreck wasn't bad enough to trigger the airbags which is good news for me since I won't have to replace the entire dashboard and good news for Keith who probably made it out without a scratch. But enough about how it looks I want to hear how it sounds. And how it sounds is not good. So step two to fixing this wrecked car is going to be getting it to run correctly. I definitely smell a burning smell. Well so the first thing to look at is the battery because car batteries should be around 12.7 volts but this one was barely even 12. But when the engine's running they should be even higher at around 13.5 or 14 and that is even lower than before. So that points us to the alternator. The alternator is the component that recharges the battery, that powers the computer, that controls the engine, which is what spins the alternator. So if the alternator fails then so will literally everything else. That probably explains why the engine was running weird and that also means I'm gonna have to replace the which is gonna be a whole lot of fun. And that's because the engineers at Hyundai thought it would be absolutely hilarious to place it in the farthest deepest corner of the engine bay where if on the off chance you do somehow manage to finesse a ratchet in there and remove all the hardware and wires holding it on you're still gonna spend half an hour wiggling it every which way trying to actually pull it from the car only to realize that it is in fact impossible to do so unless you of course also remove part of the suspension. There we go. Good joke Hyundai, very funny. Once it was out though and the replacement purchased, installation is the exact same nightmare as before. And while I was here I also swapped in a new belt and belt tensioner. So theoretically with all this stuff installed the car should run perfectly. Well... Okay so maybe it took a couple of tries to get it going but eventually everything kind of just smoothed out and the battery was actually getting charged. But if you're wondering why this thing sounds like a tractor well it's kind of a funny story actually there's uh no oil in the engine or at least nowhere near enough because the oil that I did manage to drain I completely spilled everywhere. ------- ****. So after cleaning that up popping on a new filter and adding the correct amount of oil this time I thought it might be a good idea to also check the coolant only to find out that the radiator was also completely empty and the only thing in the coolant reservoir was a dead wasp. Now I didn't want to be a jerk so I did give him a few days notice before I asked him to leave but then I remembered... Wait he actually can't read that he's uh he's a wasp. Oh yeah that is a lot smoother than before. Wait hold on does that say CCP? We are on the first test drive post repairs and so far everything seems to be going pretty well which means it's only a matter of time before something else breaks. And even though I just said that as a joke not 30 seconds down the road the very loud clicking sound started coming from the right rear tire that turned into a much more violent clunk when going over bumps. So I very quickly pulled over into the closest parking lot to get a better look at things and noticed that both control arms were completely banana'd. So back in the garage with the car on jack stands it was immediately obvious that there was also something wrong with the wheel bearing but what I didn't expect to see was the sway bar link completely disconnected from the suspension and the nut that's supposed to hold on the control arms just wasn't there. So I think I just found step three and that is to get this thing driving correctly and that means taking all of this apart. Oh yeah see these tiny fragments? It might not look that bad but this bearing is absolutely trash. As for the control arms removing those isn't quite so straightforward because the bolt here is actually so long that there's no way I can pull it all the way out unless I either disconnect the entire fuel system and drop the gas tank to create more room which uh we don't do around here or do the alternative and drop the entire subframe assembly. It's a little tedious but pretty straightforward and should no way come back to bite me. Now these control arms might look like complete garbage and that's because they are but the rubber bushings inside them are still in great condition so if I just bend these back straight they should be perfectly fine. Though I will say hitting this with a hammer probably isn't the best way to do it. Wait a minute I've got a hydraulic press what am I doing? As it turned out using technology designed specifically to apply literal tons of force was way easier so this one's good to go but the other control arm might be a little trickier because of where it's bent. This double threaded section if working correctly is what allows you to lengthen or shorten the arm so that you can fine-tune the angle in which the rear wheel is turned and that angle is called toe. My arch nemesis. And getting that measurement dialed in just right is critical to both functionality and safety so it would probably be in my best interest to stop what I'm doing trash this one and purchase a replacement control arm but somehow I was able to get this thing dead straight and still adjusting smoothly. Another win for sketchy ideas. So now with these fixed the only thing left to do is take a page out of the Korean mechanophiles book and go to my local Hyundai dealer to get my nut. And this is the part of the video where I wish I could say everything else went back together perfectly fine and nothing else went wrong but unfortunately this guy might have made a few mistakes. You see I was having trouble getting these mounting bolts started into the threads because the subframe kept falling down so I had the bright idea to whip out the biggest impact driver you could ever want to simply buzz them into place which is like using a sledgehammer to hang up a picture frame. As you might have guessed I immediately cross-threaded the very first bolt completely eviscerating half of the threads. So to fix this I bought an assorted metric tap and die kit to clean them up which I'm sure would be perfect if it actually included the size I needed. So I bought another set ran it through the hole a few times and actually got this looking good again. So this time I very carefully started all the bolts by hand buzzed them into place with a much smaller impact driver and fully torqued these down along with every other bolt. So finally this was all good but the replacement bearing I bought was not. This was very cheap like 25% the cost of a genuine hyundai wheel bearing cheap. So with that combined with the fact that the instructions that came with it misspelled the word axle I knew the build quality would be questionable but I didn't anticipate that it would be the wrong size. It's not fully seated even with the nut fully tightened down it was wiggling back and forth. Turns out it's about three millimeters shorter than what it should be meaning this washer here rather than resting on the inner race is instead sitting against the step on the spindle leaving the bearing free to bounce around. So 70 dollars later we have a replacement that actually fits and so long as I secure this nut in place without punching a hole directly through it will be perfectly fine. So five dollars later we have a brand new spindle nut that I was much more careful with this time and ten dollars after that gets us a brand new sway bar link that I made sure to actually install all of the way. And while I was here I also thought it'd be a good idea to freshen up the brakes so that I don't you know. So I got this rotor resurfaced I cleaned and re-greased the caliper and slapped on a brand new set of pads so finally with all this done that leaves us with one decent corner on the car. The other side apparently also took a bit of damage but everything here looks good and the wheel bearing seems perfectly fine. But since there's almost 120,000 miles on this car there's a very good chance that that wheel bearing is already dead too. So I completely overhauled this side as well and that means that as far as driving is concerned this car should be fully fixed. Now you might be thinking Ronnie if wheel bearings only last a hundred thousand miles and this car has 120,000 miles doesn't that also mean you should replace the front wheel bearings? And that is actually a very good question I'm very glad you asked that and there's actually a specific reason why I didn't do that I'm going to tell you about that right now. So as far as I can tell this is driving absolutely perfect. It's smooth there's no noises no rattles you could probably use an alignment because the steering wheel wants to go to one side but this is good this is really good. There is actually kind of one big problem still and that is that the entire front of the car is still missing so... Step four fixing all of that. As you know pretty much all of the components up here were completely ruined in the accident but there's also a few other little things inside the car that I have to fix simply because this is a Hyundai built in 2007. Enter the junkyard. Between three different Tiburons here I was able to find everything I needed to fix the rest of the car for only a fraction of what the parts would cost new or at least almost everything but I was able to come away with a lot including fender, other fender, bumper, passenger side taillight, ashtray assembly, oil cap, brake fluid cap, little doohickey, various bolts, temperature sensor, armrest, and of course other little doohickey. As for the headlights I actually decided to bite the bullet and buy these brand new. It's possible you actually already noticed them on that last test drive and that's because at this point every single used pair is 17 years old and super faded and these new ones are absolutely perfect except of course for the small issue of one of the corners chipping off during shipping but it's fine I'm not going to let it bother me. I'm not going to let it bother me. I'm not going to let it bother me. I'm not going to let it bother me. I'm not going to let it bother me. All the little stuff like the fluid caps, temperature sensor, and armrest were super easy to replace. I thought it'd be the same story for the ashtray assembly but I accidentally dropped the phillips bit inside the center console cavity. Oh ----. Where it was almost impossible to reach. Hell yeah. And then did it one more time where it actually was. You gotta be f*****. Well that's staying in there forever but at least now I have a place to hide my ashes. Now to get both of these fog lights working on the new bumper I completely forgot that one of the connectors was ripped apart. I could just re-pin that wire and plug it back in but this is also missing that little piece that locks it in place so I pretty much had no choice but to go back to the junkyard and salvage one from there. But the only plug available was also missing that little piece. It was an hour drive here. So I bought it anyway, cut off the old plug, and spliced the new one onto the original harness since that was easier than re-pinning. It's not the prettiest but once I got creative with some zip ties it works. Nice. I also had to epoxy this little mounting flange back onto the bumper so that it can snap onto the fender. But that was far from the last thing I had to do to get these panels to line up. Now it's not terrible if you're far away and squint but there's some panel gaps that are simultaneously too wide and too tight as well as some that are just comically large, even when everything here is adjusted as best as it can be. Some of that misalignment is due to the fact that the lower headlight supports are either very warped or, in the case of the passenger side, completely crumpled. But that can't be what's causing the issues with the fender. But lucky for us it's not exactly difficult to figure out what is. Because if you didn't know, whenever car manufacturers build a car they also make extensive documentation on everything from wiring diagrams all the way to how the chassis is assembled. But what we care about is just one specific page of very precise measurements for the engine bay. And if we compare those measurements to the actual frame and they don't match up, we'll know exactly what part of the frame is distorted and by how much. So according to Hyundai the distance from this hole to these holes should be exactly 78.5 centimeters. That is dead on for the passenger side but the driver's side is 10 millimeters too short. And that means this upper frame rail is pushed too far inward. And that's a little weird to me for two reasons. One, because the biggest impact this car had was on the other side and that's the frame rail that's perfectly in place. But two, which is probably the bigger reason, is that I paid to have this fixed five years ago. Yeah, so all the work you've seen so far has been 2024. But this was 2019. You see, I pretty much bought this car wanting it to be and thinking it would be a quick flip and even went as far to expedite the process by paying a well-reviewed auto body shop to fix all of the frame damage. However, when they decided to not fully fix what I was paying them to fix, lie to me multiple times and spray truck bed liner everywhere there was exposed steel to do me a favor and prevent rusting, I was just so frustrated that I put the car aside and told myself I wouldn't fix it until I felt I was ready to do it myself. I'm ready. Now you might think doing this on my own would still require a professional frame pulling machine, but lucky for me, I have one at home. It's a metal pole stuck in the ground. And with this metal pole, along with the cheapest come-along Harbor Freight cells that's still rated at 4,000 pounds, pulling this driver's side lower headlight support straight took all of 15 seconds, which makes me all the more angry that this wasn't already done. Now, to be fair, I did have to do some more hammering to really fine tune the final shape to make the little headlight retainer clip fit in so that the headlight itself fits in. And that took me about half an hour. But for someone who has no idea what they're doing, fixing this wasn't actually that bad. So if the rest of the process is like this, then this is going to be super easy. Oh, you. So up next is the upper frame rail. But unlike the one very thin piece of metal that was the headlight support, this is made up of multiple layers of much thicker steel. So that is exactly why I sandwiched some 2x4s between the pole and the main frame rail. That way the car won't just slide over on the grass as I'm pulling it. Now, is this sketchy? Maybe. But did this work? Also, maybe. As you can see, the frame was definitely pulled over, but not without problems. The wood kind of started splitting in half, and to make matters worse, I actually deformed the frame in a completely new way. What should be perfectly flat is now buckled into a valley to the point where the fender mounting hole is sitting about five millimeters below where it should be. Meaning... I'm an idiot. Step 4.5. Fix the damage that I just created. And to do that, I shelled out $100 on this stud welder. This guy welds a very thin copper rod onto the surface that I can then pull out with a slide hammer. Oh, ----. Repeat that a bunch more times, and we've got this more or less back into shape. Just, uh, ignore those holes. Now, it's not exactly the prettiest repair, but the mounting surface is perfectly flat again. I'm happy with it. But there is still one problem that persists, and that is that I was only able to pull the rail halfway. There's still about five more millimeters to go, and that means... We have to go back! All right, well, we're back at the pole, but this time I've made a few changes. The wood has been thoroughly reinforced, and I moved the clamp from here to the thicker part here. And theoretically, that should mean absolutely zero warping. But it also means way less leverage. Even though I'm pulling this well beyond where it needs to be, the metal still wants to just spring back to where it was when I let go. So the only logical solution is to softly tap this with a hammer to relax the metal into shape. Or I could just do that. Not exactly the sophisticated approach, but, uh, it got the job done. And with a few more minor adjustments to the upper headlight support, we have successfully gone from this to this, which is surprisingly pretty close to perfect. Also, if you notice that the fender is back to being silver and not white, well, I remembered that I actually bought this one for no reason at all, because the original never actually had any damage. Which I still don't understand, considering how there must have been a giant impact that moved the whole frame rail over, but whatever, I guess. I also had to do a few adjustments on the passenger side to get that headlight lined up with the hood. Oh, that's perfect! But now I have a much bigger task ahead of me, locking this in place. Even after hours of careful pulling and fine adjustments by hand, the passenger side headlight support still wasn't where it needed to be. So I did even more pulling, hammering, and even jacking, but none of those seemed to work out too well. Oh, and also I got the car completely stuck in the mud for five hours, so that was fun. But while I was halfway through day three of losing my mind trying to get this headlight pin lined up with the hole, something changed. I actually did it. I'm not sure what I did differently this time than I didn't do previously, because I feel like I've been doing the exact same thing for three days, but this is good. This is lining up, and I think that means we're done. Well, after giving all of the exposed steel a coat of silver paint and not truck bed liner, yes, we're done. Now obviously this is still a mishmash of colors, and there are some cosmetic scrapes still there, but as far as damage that prevents this car from being a car, this is fully repaired. And it's awesome, because I was able to take something destined for the scrapyard and rebuild it literally in my backyard. And also I fixed the windshield washer, so that's cool. And more than that, I managed to save so much money in the process. So on Facebook Marketplace, it's looking like used Tiburons in decent condition are going for around three thousand dollars, which they are 20 years old at this point, so that makes sense. But this guy, with everything said and done, all auction fees, tools, parts, I paid a total of three thousand dollars.