Hey guys, I'm finally back again with another long overdue update and glimpse into the Juggernaut skunkworks. I suggest pulling up a chair and grabbing a fresh bevy as this may be a long one...
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First of all, my apologies for the inconsistencies in my updates, but for those of you who don't already know, I live alone, work full time, own my own house, 3 cars, and a dog. Needless to say, I'm usually a pretty busy dude, and although I try and dedicate as much time to the car as I can, making sure things like getting the bills paid, running the household, shovelling sidewalks, cutting the grass etc take precedence over playing with the car.
Anyways, since my last update, the runs in the primer were addressed as I sanded the ENTIRE header panel inside and out, filled the couple of pinholes I had missed, and re-primed the whole thing again.
Once that was complete, I turned my attention to preparing the grilles for restoration before going in the new header. Some repairs were needed, so I took some pics as I went and documented the repairs and made a "how-to" thread on what I did. (Search "Grille repair and Restoration" on here in case you missed it).
Once that was done was when things started to work against me a bit. I started out by trying to sand out the chrome and copper oxidation from inbetween the fins on the grilles. To say the least, it was a very time consuming, arduous, and dirty task. It took me a week of nights to do the two grilles, and when it was all said and done, I still wasn't happy with the results as there were too many areas I simply couldn't access by sanding.
So the decision was made to have the grilles and both headlight bezels dechromed. Initially, I tried to take the cheap way out and found on a Google search that some guys had success with stripping chrome from plastic with bleach. I won't bore you with the results, but suffice to say, after several weeks (and gallons) of bleach, I ended up taking them into my local chrome plating shop to have them professionally stripped anyways.
It ended up being slightly cheaper and certainly much quicker. At least for the bezels. I dropped them off one Thursday and they were ready the following morning. Encouraged by their quick turnaround, I dropped off the grilles for them to do next, and then didn't end up seeing those back for two weeks!
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Once I finally had the grilles back in my possession, I spent some time detailing them, sanding out minor rock chip marks, trimming excess plastic flash the factory missed, etc in preparation of having them redone. The fins and the surrounds were all sanded flat with 400 grit on a block to make sure everything was perfectly flat and smooth. Along with the previously made repairs, they turned out great, and are currently waiting on me to finish (or "start" lol) on the necessary modifications that need to be done to the headlight bezels. Here's the grilles as they sit now waiting for me to catch up to them with the bezels:
I'm not going to let the cat out of the bag just yet on how or what finish will be applied to these pieces, I'll cover that on here in the future once they get done. Sorry guys!
While I was working on all that, I retired the mock-up headlights and overhauled the good "final" lights in preparation to go in. They were completely dismantled, cleaned, painted, detailed, and the adjusters were lubricated before reassembly.
The completed assemblies ready to go in:
Once the lights were reassembled, they were installed into the header, and preparations were started for provisions to mount the ballasts and transformers for the HID lights I plan to use.
The area inside the header panel above the headlights was chosen for locating the ballasts and transformers as it is well protected from any potential moisture or damage.
This area was sanded smooth, and four stainless steel sheetmetal plates (two per side, one for low beams, one for highs) were panel bonded on. These plates allow me to mount the ballasts to them with industrial strength Velcro without the worry of the Velcro pulling the paint off the header in case I ever need to replace one.
This is the area sanded smooth in preparation for the stainless plates:
With this done, the Velcro was applied to the plates and the bottoms of the ballasts as well as to the bottoms of the transformers and the tops of the ballasts. This allowed me to piggyback the transformers on top of the ballasts keeping the whole assemblies neat, tidy, and all together. Once again, transformers (and more commonly ballasts) are known to burn out occasionally requiring replacement, and the use of the Velcro allows me to remove and replace these components without any hassle or damage should any fail.
Here they are all in place:
Happy with the progess on this area, it was time to concentrate on final fitment and alignment of the header to the fenders on the car. Remember, this header is not original to the car, plus with the modifications I made to the fronts of the fenders to eliminate the front filler panel, some bodywork was going to be required.
For those of you that may not have caught the part of the build where I narrowed and tucked the front bumper, here's a quick rundown of what I did:
"Pockets" were fabricated and welded to the fronts of the fenders to accommodate the ends of the bumper to sit in. They look like this:
The roughly 2" tall section of the fender extensions that sit directly under the header correspond and bolt to a custom made sheetmetal filler panel I created from a Cutlass sedan.
The following pics are of the filler panel in its raw unfinished form. The perforated mesh section below the headlights are the fresh air locations for the air filters as my ram air intakes will be mounted directly behind them. The filler panel bolts to the underside of the header above the mesh area via four nutserts (per side) that I installed, and is further supported in the center by utilizing the lower grille mounting screws.
Continued... ---->>>
