Bodywork Part 4

The bodywork continues and this weekend I switched to the cowling, at least I think that is what it is called.  The radio antenna mounts in it and it is the piece that fits over the dash and steering wheel.  There is a piece of copper that is on the underside that helps the radio work better and it was duct taped to the cowling but the duct tape was old and dryrotted so I decided to pop rivet it in place instead.  I used counter sunk rivets and then covered them with bondo so they wouldn't show.  Here are some pics.

That was an easy change.  The next one wasn't so easy -- and I'm still working on it.  On the right side of the car the gap between the cowling and the side panel is small and the way that it should be but on the right side the gap was too big in my opinion.

 

 

So, I started removing material where the two pieces meet.

After I removed about as much material as I felt comfortable with, I finally realized that I really needed to change the shape of the piece a little bit.  I needed to get the piece to flex a little bit so the best way to do that was to cut some slits in the piece which you can actually see in the picture on the right above.  But here is another pic.  You can also see the spider cracks in this piece which were most likely caused by forcing it to fit the way it should.  Getting fiberglass pieces to fit right can be very difficult!

By getting the piece to flex a little bit the gap has closed up nicely.  Of course, now I needed to permanently change the piece so that it fits right from now on.  So, I removed the gel coat on either side of the slits and taped the piece to the car and then fiberglassed over the slits.  The blue tape is just to protect the side panel from getting fiberglass resin on it.  I also fiberglassed the underside after the resin hardened.

The piece mounts to the chassis at the front and my changes to the left side of course changes how the hole lines up to the mounting point.  As you can see, the holes have been expanded quite a bit over the years so I took the opportunity to re-glass the piece and re-drill the holes.  I haven't finished that yet.





You can also see the piece of wood that is being used as a spacer on the cowling's right side (left picture above).  I will come up with something different but I haven't decided what yet.  

I have also been working on the nose and the shock cover but I haven't taken any pictures of them yet.  I haven't taken pictures of them because all I have been doing is repairing spider cracks. However, they aren't fitting the way I would like so I will be making some changes to those as well and will document those changes.

The engine kit was supposed to be delivered on Friday of last week but it was delayed and it should be delivered tomorrow (Monday).  Can't wait to see it!