Worklog: 2003 GMC Sonoma 2WD 2.2L

[C0RR0SIVE]

Day 4:

So, today I got three packages... I thought that some of the components would be on the freight truck, such as the radiator, and main radiator support due to size and weight... Well, they came on standard fedex ground, and this is where I become slightly upset... It seems the radiator and support came from the SAME warehouse, same day, but, one thing is throwing me a bit off... One box was CRUSHED... I aint talking about slight crushing... I am talking about it being CRUSHED CRUSHED... I got rather ****ed as I had just woke up. At least the FedEx driver here is NICE and offers to leave the boxes in the garage so my mother doesn't have to deal with them during the day, so I know this was done during shipping between lexington and the warehouse...

So, before I even touched that box, I decided to take pictures of the box. This box contained my radiator support, which is one of the most critical pieces for getting EVERYTHING on the front end lined up and installed properly.
1:

2:

3:

You can tell it was crushed so badly that extra tape had to be put on it, Rockauto uses only the tape that has the rockauto name, to help tell if someone has opened a package... Well... Mine certainly opened, it was busted open all over, crushed...

So, I figured, well, that most likely had the head lamps, and other components, so I am getting a bit more upset as I drag it inside to open it and find the radiator support. I thought all was good since it's supposed to be of decent quality steel.

Upon close inspection, I find that it's damaged in several areas, mostly on the driver side where the headlamp mounts... Just great, I either have to stall my project for another 2 weeks, or attempt to straighten this crap out by hand and pray I can get things lined up...

Passenger side back bottom of support where it's got a slight bent mount tab:

Passenger side front top where the headlight mounts is in good shape, so the driver side should mirror this exactly... Well...

IT DOESN'T!!!

There is more damage, but I am rather annoyed, ****ed, and getting ready to send yet another email to rockauto... The ONLY thing that was "protecting" this support was the bag it was wrapped in, no fil-air bags, no bubble wrap, no foam, nothing. If they had at least thrown in a few Fil-Air bags it might have saved this from being damaged... They threw them into the box that had the fender that is made of stronger steel, so why not the more fragile support that is one of the most critical components? I blame not just RockAuto for the damage, but FedEx as well for allowing a large package to be crushed, then not contacting the company that had it shipped, nor the customer to see what should be done. If I was awake, I would have asked the driver to wait till I contacted rockauto, and most likely reject the package and have it sent back.

Will update on what happens with this crap as it goes on...

This is a side shot, you guys probably won't know where/how it's bent as it's supposed to have a few bends, but, you can see where it impacted something hard enough to cause the paint to come off... Now I have bare steel that I must paint, and I noticed this in several other places that had slight damage.

At least I have new in-tact head lamps... Only opened one box as of right now. But, I rather like the fact I purchased the version that contains foglights, should help with seeing things at night... Just gotta find some wiring for them...

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

Update: Day 4.5

Well, some great news, some slightly bad news...

Rockauto offered to compensate me for the time to repair the radiator support and repaint it where there is damage to the paint that protects the steel... Rather grateful for that... But now a new issue has arrived...

I replied to my original ticket number since the support representative is a nice fellow and very helpful.

Go ahead, that is acceptable...

But, and I am sorry for this... Yesterday the freight truck on my order with shipping number REMOVED via Echo should have had made a delivery, we called them and asked why the truck hadn't delivered it by 9:00PM, they put us on early delivery for 11/30/2012, we had to call them at ~5PM today to ask where the truck was and argue with the driver to get the package here. I inspected the main component of the package being the hood for the truck to make sure it wasn't damaged, which it wasn't. So, I went ahead and signed off on the papers for delivery. Well, once I got the hood out of the package, after the driver had left, I noticed the remainder of my parts, while great condition, they are not the proper ones that I had ordered.... So I started to hunt down the shipping paper that listed what was packed inside the box for shipping, couldn't find it.

The parts that shipped should have been the following:

Sherman CCC898210
Various Mfr GM1066138
Various Mfr GM1067138
Various Mfr GM1230203

I received only CCC898210 and GM1230203... But, I got two parts I didn't order... Part number GM1066138 and GM1067138.... But... its not right.... I have uploaded a screen shot and picture to my webserver for you to view.... As I am highly confused right now... Not sure if it's an error on the Rockauto site, or warehouse error or what... These aren't critical parts, but, I wanted them replaced while I had very easy access to them...

In this image, http://www.clantwgb.com/c0rrspics/gmc/wrongpart.jpg it shows my shipping information with the parts on the truck as I just listed, it also shows the RockAuto website, what is highlighted in RED is what I ordered, note the picture rockauto provides, along with the description... I marked in blue what I received... What I got was Impact Bar Brackets that has the number that is on the Imbact Bar Braces... This truck doesn't even use this style of bracket, but a different style... What I had ordered was thought to be, due to the picture and description given the braces that support the outer portion of the bumper during a collision...

Below are pictures of the items received, please note these show the part number on the list I had ordered, but they do not, what so ever, at all, match the prices nor description that I had ordered for... The ones below are pictured on part number GM1067133 and GM1066133 and not GM1067138 and GM1066138... I can only assume that it is a website error and someone confused the last digit of the part number when inputting the information to the website as the set of numbers should be... swapped... So... What am I gonna be able to do to get my braces by Tuesday morning at the latest?

http://www.clantwgb.com/c0rrspics/gmc/20.jpg
http://www.clantwgb.com/c0rrspics/gmc/21.jpg
http://www.clantwgb.com/c0rrspics/gmc/22.jpg

I honestly hope RockAuto, and Aaron can come through for me... I honestly hate bothering them over all this, but, I have only three days maximum I can work on this truck for a month due to work now, and wanted to get this all together and at least running/road worthy so I can save money on fuel, a big v8 car idling at lunch so I can stay warm while I eat chews through a ton of fuel.

 

[kmote]

Interesting thread. I know very little about cars really and certainly wouldn't take on something like this.

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

Interesting thread. I know very little about cars really and certainly wouldn't take on something like this.

Just because you wouldn't, doesn't mean that some people here wouldn't be interested... I mean... This is the automotive section... Should be about more than a few junk threads, a few build threads, or repair threads for peoples various cars would be nice if they do tackle such things.


Update... Rockauto once again sent the wrong parts, sent in another complaint, considering talking to the BBB and saying screw it. Tonight is my first night off in awhile, so I am going to install at minimum, the radiator support, condensor, radiator, and reconnect all lines. Then if I have time, throw the fender on.

 

[kmote]

Just because you wouldn't, doesn't mean that some people here wouldn't be interested... I mean... This is the automotive section... Should be about more than a few junk threads, a few build threads, or repair threads for peoples various cars would be nice if they do tackle such things.

I think you misread or at least misinterpreted what I said.

 

[PP Mguire]

Just because you wouldn't, doesn't mean that some people here wouldn't be interested... I mean... This is the automotive section... Should be about more than a few junk threads, a few build threads, or repair threads for peoples various cars would be nice if they do tackle such things.


Update... Rockauto once again sent the wrong parts, sent in another complaint, considering talking to the BBB and saying screw it. Tonight is my first night off in awhile, so I am going to install at minimum, the radiator support, condensor, radiator, and reconnect all lines. Then if I have time, throw the fender on.

He was pretty much saying good for you, but no way in hell would I do something like this.

 

[Matt77]

He was pretty much saying good for you, but no way in hell would I do something like this.

I think a project like this would be fun to do, actually.

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

I feel sorry for anyone trying to look at this thread... Anyways... Thank god Chrome resizes everything after it's downloaded...

So, this will be the final update, I didn't take pictures of the entire process, just not enough time, and it's difficult to work on this truck with my work schedule. But, I did take plenty of pictures.

1: I skipped pictures of these individual parts being installed, in these two, you can see both the fender and radiator support installed, took a good bit of time to get both installed, and the fender aligned with the existing body panels.

2: This is the next milestone I made, condensor for the AC is installed, as is the auxilary tranny cooler, and the radiator, had a few issues due to line thickness, nothing like clipping a bit of plastic out of the way to give enough room to install things. I also had an issue when it came to the condensor and radiator... They don't just bolt in, but on the sides have rubber boots that are bolted in, to isolate these things from vibrations that could cause them to crack.

3: Finally installed the radiator fan shroud... The old one that is... Couldn't locate a new one, this one will hold me over for a few weeks. This part is actually critical, as it helps generate a negative pressure allowing air to flow more efficiently over the radiator and other components. It is also critical in the fact that it is what holds the radiator in place!
I also have the AC lines installed with new o-rings. At this point I went ahead and evacuated the system to prep it for refrigerant.

4: After a long night of routing cables, and attempting to install the battery tray, only to notice that it, along with the wheel well liner was bent out of place, I finally have the bumper, and ONE headlamp in place. Thanks to the wheel liner, it is still throwing parts out of alignment, mostly the battery tray, and the radiator support. I really wish I put this on the order list, but, it was just too costly, and didn't look damaged...

5: Hood has been sitting patiently, a few friends also dropped by to help out with the install a bit earlier in the log. They kindly removed the old parts from the old hood I needed. Such as the spring, felt pad stuff, washer nozzels, and various other components through out this process.

6:Not a milestone, but, it took two hours to get that driver side headlight in, couldn't find the old clips that held the old one in, so, it ended up being ziptied into place till next month.

7: With the help of my sister earlier, we got the hood on... BUT, I wasn't the one that lost the bolts, it was one of my buddies earlier... So we kinda rigged it with a few other bolts, but they allowed too much play at the hinge, and made aligning the hood impossible. Once my buddies showed back up, we got the right bolts installed, and spent an hour aligning the hood with everything. It is perfectly aligned on both sides left/right and up/down on the front side and back side as well.

I blame the missing bolts on this guy, my best friend since middle school. He wasn't too happy when I told him to install the battery.

8: Well, I decided to get pics, for ****s n' giggles. Guy on the left was more of a, mmm, well, he gets me my smokes and drinks when I ask, and kindly does things around the garage as asked. Not too familiar with anything, so I couldn't exactly put him to work on the truck with confidence.... Joey, on the right, we have been working on my cars/trucks together for a good long while now, so I am confident in his abilities to not break things, sometimes that is. He likes to break 1/2in sockets very often for some reason...

9: End of the day, haven't slept in ~50 hours, working on this thing. Only thing left to go on is the grill. Spent over an hour bleeding air from the power steering system, and the truck self bleeds the coolant system thankfully. Headlights are NOT aligned, at all! One was hitting the rook, the other right into the ground. Got them close to being aligned, needs to go to the shop for that to be done properly IMO.

10: The completed truck, all that is left is a paint job, and the alignment for headlights at the shop. I had an issue with the grill... Because the radiator support is ever so slightly warped, I had to use epoxy to get the clips to stop poping out... Not pleased... But... It works I guess. Foglights still need wiring ran for as this truck didn't use this model headlamp, but, that can also wait! I am sleeping my next day off I pray...

 

[PP Mguire]

Good job man. You have more patience than I do.

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

The only thing that required patience was dealing with Rock Auto, horrible customer support, they really don't know how to listen when you tell them that they have wrong part numbers on the descriptions... Oh, and lining the hood up was VERY.... annoying.