We hosted yet another Christmas meal at our house yesterday, 3 meals in 4 days has been a bit hectic on the domestic front.
But by banking some brownie points for cooking & cleaning, I could spend some time on the car today.
Nose Job - Plan B:
More than once on this build I have struggled to see the wood from the trees.
In this case, I was too busy working out what I needed to do to fix the shape of the bonnet's nose from the outside.
It was only when I saw
Swifty's nose job that something else dawned on me.
I had a brief look at my bonnet's nose yesterday and although the inside lip for the grille to fit against isn't smooth, it is roughly the same depth.
So if I make the outside edge of the passenger side my reference point...
And build up the outside of the driver's side to match...
Then I will end up with the grille sitting at the same "wrong" angle that it is now.
If I tried to move the grill lip edge forward on the driver's side, I'd risk the bonnet hoop coming away.
So today I decided to stop "dilly dallying" around and get on with making the fix as simple as possible.
One thing that actually worked in my favour was the fact I've already removed a section on the bonnet below the grill opening.
This allowed me to start cutting from the edge of the nose here:
I used an off cut of box section to give me a 20 mm spacer.
( Which is the same adjustment that both
Swifty & Mac measured. )
I extended the cut most of the way across.
Then another idea I copied from
Swifty was to add the parcel tape covered strip
before the fixing brackets.
I started on the passenger side and slowly worked my way across, checking the gap as I did.
Not easy to see from above, but the view from below is better.
Then I cut out some fibreglass matting.
Note:
I will fill the very thin gaps by opening up the slit from above.
And when it was applied the inside edge looked like this.
I am now happy that even if the nose isn't 100% perfect, it will still be better than when I started.
Next I started chopping up my matting scraps ready for some "home brew" filler.
Although, now I just need to reshape & build up the grill opening, so I will not need much.
( Compared to Plan A, which was to build out the whole of the driver's side using this stuff. )
However, by now, the blustery conditions I had been working in had brought dark clouds & the threat of rain.
So rather than push my luck, I
carefully moved the bonnet and wrapped it up.
I'm now going to switch back to domestic chores and start laying the table for Christmas Day itself.
That way I might be able to get a little bit more done tomorrow.
So until next time, take care, Paul.
