Another busy day, but squeezed some work in on the car while my wife & daughters were out clothes shopping.
I took some measurements from the bulkhead on the front drive before returning to the bottom of the garden.
Then I marked up an off cut from the lowered floor pans and some mild steel tubing.
This gave me what I needed to set up the missing crush tube arrangement.
Given how badly all the holes line up at the moment I want to start again from scratch.
My plan is to make these holes on the bottom of the bulkhead bigger so the tubes will pass through.
Then I will weld the rectangular plate over the top of the existing metal.
Then I will cut the tops off to match the top edge of the bulkhead.
So once everything was cleaned up, I clamped & weld the first tube into place.
Then using the cardboard template I made yesterday I could position the 2nd tube correctly.
Which ended up looking like this.
Now those of you who know what you are doing will have already spotted yet another school boy error.
It had occurred to me that the way I had welded the tube meant I would need to widen the holes quite a bit.
It even occurred to me that it might have been better to drill a hole in the plate and weld it from the other side.
As that would have been easier to grind flat, but there is a much better reason for doing it that way...
Which is that it would have left me with a hole for the mounting bolts to pass through.
Note to self... you are stupid!!
Obviously this has only dawned on me while I type this up, so I have already put some etch primer on this mess.
At least it will be easy enough to drill a hole in the plate to match the tubes.
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Anyway, while I had the primer out, I decided to do the bonnet hinge & hoop.
I did grind some of the bolding material first and turned my drive into a winter snow scene.
I will do some more work in this area when I come to fit the grille.
But for now, after I had cleaned up the mess I got the primer on.
I also noticed that the holes in the hinge mounting points are actually different sizes.
At least when the time comes, that is an easy fix too.
Obviously not much progress, but progress all the same.
Happy Easter, Paul.
