The 'E' Type Forum

Blake and I fitted my bonnet on Monday. I've never seen the bonnet on the car, so it's quite a momentous step for me! It's a trial fit to allow Blake, amongst other things, to fit the outer sills. To store and move the bonnet around I'd made up a giant skateboard using a piece of ply with 2 Lidl furniture moving dollies screwed to either end, and a piece of carpet on the top. The bonnet has been standing on its rear end. We turned the bonnet over so that it was standing on it's nose, and although it sits at a slight angle because of the rake back of the nose, it was surprisingly stable. Once pushed up fairly close to the bonnet frame, it was obvious that the frame was too high which we cured by jacking the back of the car up. I'd changed the hinges because the originals were cracked and rotten, and run a tap through the mounting point threads so everything was moving very freely, and left the hinges slightly loose,
Once the bonnet was pushed into place between the mounting points, the top hat bushes slid straight in and that was that. Since then I've spent quite a few hours experimenting with the hinge shims and although more fettling is needed we now have a pretty even gap of 3mm.
Is this about right?
I changed the 8 hinge mounting screws to cap head screws because the inboard ones were difficult to get a socket on, but then realised that perhaps I should have just left the bonnet hinge bolts out whilst adjusting the shims as it's the head of these bolts that makes socket access difficult. As a diversion from adjusting the shims, I fitted the wiper mechanism which was nowhere near as difficult as I thought it would be. When I removed it a year or so ago, I experimented with refitting it, and wrote on it how I did it which helped.
Andy

Brilliant progress Andy. A 3 mm gap on anything with an etype is good

Thanks Phil. Finished rebuilding the IRS today, and managed to get it off the bench and onto it's trolly without incident. Phew.
ATB
Andy

Lovely work Andy!
Just to share my experience with the bonnet, it fitted perfectly with the bare shell, then when I'd got the suspension and engine in and the car standing on its wheels, it was some way out. Basically the car structure sagged minutely in the middle which left the nose too high. I had to remove several shims (and was glad there were enough to do so).
On the question of gaps, I think getting the door and bonnet gaps visually the same is more important than the absolute size....

Hi Jeremy
Thanks for passing that on. I was going to do some more bonnet fettling, but after reading your post, I'm going to leave it as it is. As an aside, I've got lucky with my engine as I think it's one of the last that VSE are going to finish as Tim is retiring. They were going to do my carbs, but I got them to send them back to me to cut down his workload. They've gone off to Southern Carbs who are very close to me. This is just some of the crap that came out of my inlet manifold! Fortunately, I managed to get the temp sender, and the water & vacuum fittings out without incident.
ATB
Andy