Gary, Mr T, Scottie & Dave - Thanks chaps, I'll try to cover your points in the post below.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Thinking Time:
I been on sick child duty for most of the day, so whilst I've not worked on the car, I have been thinking about it.
Now whether that is a good, or a bad, thing remains to be seen.
Oddly my thoughts started when
Phil9 put this picture of his car up this morning.
It reminded me that those curves across the bonnet / scuttle were one of the things that drew me to the car in the first place.
I guess I had reached the point where I had given up on the idea of making my car look that good.
It is true to say I wouldn't have dreamed of butchering the body work the way I did when I started.
But the cold reality is that the body shell would simply not fit over the bulkhead in its original form.
And the bulkhead is being used to overcome other problems with the Cordite framework and Cordite fibreglass bulkhead.
So the next compromise was that if I wanted the bottom edge of the body work to look OK, the cutting had to start.
I knew that if I changed the bulkhead that I would have to butcher the bonnet to match.
However, I had figured that if I was able to make a simple curved bulkhead / bonnet lip then it would be easier for me to match.
It was actually
Micky1mo's "hybrid" that gave me hope that this was possible.
In his case, the bonnet still retains all of the nice curves at the front.
But it all flattens out to a simple bonnet / bulkhead edge at the back.
I will come on to my latest idea for the bulkhead in a minute...
But before I get to that, I have decided to "fix" the passenger side to provide a straight/square line across the bulkhead.
Obviously that is yet more work, but this build is not likely to be finished any time this year, so why compromise now?
Given how much work I have to do on the body shell's bulkhead, why build it wonky to save time?
In my head, the current bonnet shape couldn't work because the body shell wouldn't fit.
But I may have missed a trick when I was trying to solve this "3-D puzzle" yesterday.
Let's go back to these photos...
What I keep missing is the fact that the bonnet lip would actually have been "ahead" of the Spitfire bulkhead.
So if the length of wood can join both sides without fouling, then a thin slice of the entire original bonnet lip could have remained.
( With a thin section of scuttle filling the area to the left of the wood before it reached the bulkhead. )
There is still the problem with the fact that the curves of the body shell dip below the line of the Spitfire bulkhead.
However, it might be possible to "sculpt" the scuttle from that original the bonnet lip back over the Spitfire bulkhead in some way.
Now clearly this is not going to look as good at the original, flowing, shape, but please see point #1, this shape doesn't fit.
So my next experiment will be to see what the current profile of the bonnet looks like if I simply join the two cut ends of the body shell together.
In order to do this I will add a "barrier" layer to the inside of the bonnet and then build up a layer of fibreglass over the top.
This should give me the shape required for the bonnet lip and I will see what I can do with that.
It is certainly worth spending some time looking at the options based on everyone's advice.
Finally I think there will be some sort of "Wembley scoop" required for the brake master cylinder.
( I was actually looking at how
Mr T made the scoop in his reply when I was re-reading his build the other day. )
So even if no physical work was done today, I might be making some small progress.
Cheers, Paul.
Threaded Mode
