Well, it's been a very productive day on the car.
🙂
I don't usually post up on my thread as frequently as I have in the past few days, but I'm wasting no time in charging ahead on the car while I can. I just know if I procrastinate and put off posting this update, it'll turn into another monster 3 page one, so I figure I better stay on top of it.
As I mentioned in yesterday's update, now that the corners are done, it's time to address the hood to header panel gap.
Oddly enough, after laying a straightedge against both the hood edge and the header panel edge, I found the header was actually straighter.
I attribute this to the leading edge of the hood possibly pulling back a bit during fabrication as the hood skin was forced upwards to make up the raised cowl section.
Regardless, while the header was definitely straighter, it still wasn't perfect. After marking the areas that needed some material removed, this was quickly rectified with some 40 grit on a long board. The SMC sands pretty easily.
This is all that needed to be removed from the header to make it straight:
With the header edge now straight, I had a datum line from which to get an accurate gap. Laying the straightedge up against the hood edge confirmed what I was seeing when the hood was closed (its more apparent if you zoom in on the gap):
A considerable amount of material needed to be added particularly at the body line transition.
It's at this point that I'd like to give a big shout out and thank you to Jim and Jack, they both reminded me recently of the technique of adding material via small diameter round rod.
I already knew about this method, but with them reminding me of it, it was still fresh in my mind and seemed to be the perfect way to address this issue.
I already had some 1/8" round steel rod on hand that I was going to use for another project, so after cutting it into three lengths for the passenger's side, I started to lay the longest piece out to add on the hood edge.
The rod is sandwiched between the hood edge and the steel plate.
The steel plate is there simply to keep the rod from bowing out and as straight as possible.
After tacking the rod in place, the magnets were removed and the rod slowly welded in place. The same procedure was repeated for the other two pieces that made up the remainder of the passenger's side.
With that done, the tops of the welds were ground down until I saw grinder marks just start to appear on the sheetmetal. This is where the grinding stopped.
From here, I switched to my body file.
If you're not familiar with one, a body file is similar to the type of file that is used for lead work. It's designed to be used in conjunction with the pick end of a body hammer. A low spot is slowly picked up with the body hammer, and the body file is used to map out and knock down the high spots caused by the hammer. It's a time consuming process, but if done correctly, can result in a repair that needs zero body filler.
In this case, it was the perfect tool for the job to knock down the remainder of the welds flush with the hood surface.
Body file:
The fantastic job it did on the welds:
The benefit of using this over the grinder was that it ensured the edge was perfectly flat and smooth with the adjoining sheetmetal. No worries of under or over grinding and possibly going through the hood edge or unintentionally rounding the edge over a bit.
With my now nice flat surface, I masked off a thin strip of the front edge and applied some machinists blue. Once it dried, I removed the hood bumpstops so the hood intentionally sat lower than the header. I set my caliper to 3/16", and using the edge of the header panel as my guide, scribed a line into the blue. This is why it was critical to get the header panel edge straight first.
It's a bit tough to see (and even harder to photograph), but this is part of what needed to be removed.
The masking tape provided a line that was a little easier to see as I began to file down the excess material.
Continued >>>
