The 'E' Type Forum

At the same time as I am discovering the nuances of OTS door-glass-tilt adjustments, I've got the hood stripped off and so have introducing another level of 3-dimensional imponderables.

One of the key elements in this cascade of potentially-wrong dimensions/alignments has to be the front wooden Beam or Spar, and there appears to be almost nothing written about it - unless I'm searching for the wrong terms and words ?

Could I start this discussion with some pictures of what I found upon dismantling, and kind folks might comment on what looks right / wrong ?

The hood looked reasonably OK before I took it off, but, a bit like George Best on Beckham :

the front lip never sat parallel with the screen-top
the door-glass on one side hit the metalwork when slamming
the over-centre hooks didn't sit comfortably were a bitch to get into place
and their locating holes had been modified on the roof-pan metalwork
the door-glass rubbers involved a ton of ugly contact-adhesive
most of the screws and bolts were wrong

Here, in no particular order, then, is what I'm starting from : I'm told by A Trade Expert that the replacement (composite ?) front spars can require a LOT of fettling and adjustment if the windscreen isn't going to be cracked at some point, and that I'd do better to keep the Spar I have which may be the original ?

































Many thanks in advance.

Bump for this - really, nobody ?

Come on lads, someone must have tinkered with these ?

No but I'm just about to - which is no help to you at all!

Rory,
Upon the first challenging restoration for the S2 OTS, I felt lucky to have an almost perfect hood structure, which just needed a bit of adjustment around the cantrails and repainting.
For the undergoing S1 OTS work, I haven't yet tackled the hood structure, but looking at the above I very much hope not to have to go as deep as you!

Rory,

I dismantled my hood (although on an S2) and the wood bow looks correct. I would agree with the advice of reusing the original.

My whole canopy had been butchered and was beyond repair so I was advised to purchased a new metal canopy and repro wood bow (below). However when I came to get Eric Suffolk to re-trim the hood, he preferred to use bow from his supplier due to the amount of fettling to get the new wood bows to fit. So my bow was never used.

BTW - the fit of the new metal canopy was shocking

Repro wood bow


Rear wood bow
There's also a wood section on the trailing edge of the canopy and I was told these are no longer available.



It may be a difference between the early cars and the S2 but the stop for link 1 (third picture from end) on my hood was a stud with a offset threaded section. Presumably to offer some adjustment but I never got to the bottom of why it was needed/adjusted.



Finally, the parts manual lists the setscrews for the main pillar section in the last photo as:

• 4 x UCS513/4H - 1/8" 32TPI length 1/2" with cap underneath as countersunk

• 4 x UFS419/3H - round head 3/16" 32 TPI length 3/8" with plain and shakeproof washers

I can't remember which setscrews secure the inner and outer edges though. Also, this is assuming the sizes remained the same over both models.

Chris

Thanks for the various inputs.

I do remember, Chris, your account of how awful the metalwork was on your pan.

On my S1 the little eccentric screws are just "stops" that determine how far back the front pan sits when it's folded back into the nest of frames in the down position.



The principle shape when it's in the "up" position is determined exclusively by the hard stops that are an integral part of the main hinges, so very much non-adjustable.




Would anyone care to propose a sketch of what the cross-section of the wooden front-beam / sealing rubber / pan-nose / chrome screen-trim ought to look like, ideally ?

This would be a huge help to people feeling their way in the dark.

Er, like me.

Some thoughts on this subject from a very authoritative but anonymous (because I've not asked his permission) source :

..... as for the hood fit I agree ....... a 25mm strip added to the front edge of the bow it will be a nicer fit, you have to take into account fitting the new chrome as in length and curve, the biggest problem with Etype hoods is that when they were originally made, yes they were a good fit - by the standards of the 60's era... The cars had never been welded due to rust etc so everything was set up just so, as in where the hood was mounted and the pillar panels. The cars are now 50+years old and 99.9% have had work done to them which alters the set up ..... also the replacement windows (I have been told) are not 100% the correct shape, which will exagurate the misfit of the pan to it.

.... just as a test to also see how your car is if you measure from where the tacking strip is fitted, use the interior light as a center point and measure the curve all around to the B post where the door closes i would bet that driver's side and passenger's side are different by a min of 5-10 mm.

Todays standards and expectations were not used on Etypes when they were being built, we have a tolerance now of 1-3 mm but back then it was a 'that will do' tolerance - most of the time the hood pan is not the problem, its all the other factors, a new windscreen, or welding done to the wheel arches or a new rear bulkhead which alters where the frame was originally aligned.

I've just spent about 2 weeks working with my local body shop to try to fit my hood frame/canopy panel/wooden header etc. It has been one of the toughest jobs I've had on my major restoration of my '69 S2 roadster.

First off I re-used my old canopy panel and header that looked very much like yours. Repairing and restoring as needed with penetrating epoxy/epoxy putty/welding up holes etc.

My major problem that one side of my hood mechanism was 9/16 inch further ahead on one side than the other!

I would recommend the following:

1. Test the fit of the wooden header to the windscreen. Do not worry too much if the wood "wings" out at the ends to some extent this can be bent into a better fit and then anchored through the metal canopy using wood screws.

2. Test where the left and right side "arms" come to without the metal canopy panel fitted. they should reach forward the same distance and same height each side.

3. If you have a disaster of a fit like mine do not try to bend the hood sticks. The options I chose was to re-engineer the rear pivots points. The first pivot point up from the long arm that fasteners to the inside face of the B post needs to perhaps move back and down - this pivot point controls the space that the arm has above the window amongst other things. This also helps to push a side forward. Finally I extended the top short arm that fits to the top pivot point by about 3/4 inch. This pushed the whole arm forward. Things seem to fit better now. I doubt if it will ever be perfect.

Somewhere along the line my hood frame had obviously been bent. I say this because accurate measurement between the top of the B pillars and the top of the screen (A) posts were equal either side - the tub was square and accurate it was all in the fit of the frame.

Good luck

Thanks for the various inputs.

These pictures show the "natural" position of the metalwork, in that the corner cones anchor easily onto the windscreen uprights ; you'll see I've disconnected the link bars that pivot behind the seats, reckoning that their length can be tweaked by bending their curves when the time comes - and that what matters is taking the sweet-spot like this as a starting point ?

Is that a reasonable approach ? Putting the hood up in its previous incarnation was a 10-minute fight with the levers and hooks, as if everything was having to be bent, and I'm keen to avoid that this time.

I thought it made sense to get the metalwork to fit before introducing the wooden spar. Everything currently looks remarkably symmetrical.



It looks in many of these pictures as if an addition of between 10 and 15mm along the front of the metal roof-pan would improve considerably the potential to get the hood to fit and look right, but I'm not sure ultimately which reference edge I'm aiming for ?





I have had to insert some rubber off-cuts over the ends of both of the side clamping-hooks in order to get some bite on the mechanism, but am reluctant to go back to the PO's solution which was to re-drill higher up within the roof pan the mounting points for the hooks, as this was probably what made the whole thing such a fight to fit.







David posted somewhere a shot of an "ideal" hood alignment where the front of the pan came down as far as the lower edge of the upper windscreen chrome-trim, such that the chrome finisher on the hood-front essentially became a substitute for that windscreen trim.



Is there consensus over this, and would others with experience of tweaking these areas like to suggest how they would go about optimising what I've got before trimming the hood please ?





Lastly, is it normal that there is not a smooth transition between the rear of the hood-pan and the hood-rails ? See the straight-edge in the pictures, two contact points on the hood rails take you way-high over the pan, or aligning the pan and the first hood rail has you shooting for the stars.



It never shocked me in its previous trim, and may be perfectly normal in that the hood-pan doesn't actually espouse the canvas over its full depth anyway ?

This is how it should not be (my own car I am ashamed to say!):


It was an even spacing all along until I tightened up the centre toggle in a vain attempt to stop it leaking. The hood chrome should completely hide the windscreen chrome, which is what Jaguar intended.

This is the way GB Trim do it:

Hi,
you might be already beyond that point, but i remember seing on CMC' website an ad for a synthetic replacement for the "front wooden Beam or Spar", saying that they re-designed it in a better shape. I don't know how much better though...
best wishes
Marc

... and i forgot to ask: would anybody have the "roof header steel panel" missing inside my FHC ? Maybe somebody who scalped a FHC in the past, in order to get an OTS?
Any idea?
Marc

Marc, no, not too far to consider that - but in fact my wooden one fits the windscreen profile surprisingly well and I've been advised by BAS that if that's the case I might do well to keep it.

They warned me of alternative spars that still required loads (underlined) of work and might yet crack the windscreen if not correctly adjusted.

I'm going to hasard a sketch of the cross section of the wood-spar / roof-pan / rubber seal / windscreen trim / hood-pan chrome-trim assembly and offer it up for suggestions as this must be the key to getting this area sorted.

David - are you indeed suggesting then that the hood-chrome-strip should echo precisely, and indeed replace, visually, the top chrome windscreen trim ?

It would make sense.

Yes Rory, that is the way it should be. If not Jaguar would certainly have not gone to the expense of fitting it. Hood down - chrome windscreen surround on display; hood up - chrome hood trim on display as the hood should cover the windscreen surround. That is the way the hood seals properly and looks good. It is highly likely you will need to reshape the front wood bow to get the fit right. Every time I see an E-Type with two levels of chrome showing I wince however my car is like that. On the other hand I can't see the poor fit from the driving seat

Thanks for that confirmation David.

However, is it not the case that the wooden spar is actually incidental to this fit - in the sense that it's the metalwork that decides where the front lip is, and at what height the chrome sits etc and not the wood ?

My intention had been to get the metalwork right first, then next get the woodwork-to-windscreen fit correct, each being independant operations, and only then associate one with the other - after all, the two are only linked by screws and there is no reason to start by joining them together.

Or have I not understood something ?

Not my field at all, but I was always told you make the metal fit the wood rather than making the wood fit the metal. I've got all this to come yet on mine!

The wood has to fit the windscreen shape, so it can compress the seal evenly.

Similarly, the hood-pan has to respect the shape of the windscreen top chrome rail (and particularly mimic its lower edge in fact) so that we get the "David-Look" of the chrome trim, which - incidentally - Jack at BAS endorses too as the ideal to aim for.

Both those conditions can be satisfied without recourse to joining one to the other ; once you've got them both right you have to work out how to screw them together so that both conditions remain unaltered.



I'm not far from obtaining satisfaction with this, there are some gaps between the spar and the pan but I think these can easily be shimmed on assembly and will be invisible.

I am about to get a 10mm strip (it's reassuringly regular over the whole length) TIG-welded along the front nose of the pan and would appreciate feedback from anyone else who has had to do this ; I'm confident I can dolly the extended lip to faithfully track the windscreen chrome, although the shoulders at either end will not be quite so straightforward.











The curves and the shoulders, where they espouse the windscreen-pillar chrome cappings, are not quite so close and the current pan metalwork will need extending downwards by about 15mm, and 18mm at the inner edges, if the upholstered and trimmed pan is to sit neatly over the chrome cappings.






Could anyone with a really neat hood-to-pillar interface confirm that such "close-mating" is indeed desirable and is what I should be aiming for please ?

So, "some fell on stony ground" apparently.

Undeterred, I think I've made some progress - although, as you will see at the end, other issues have raised their ugly heads and confirmed the usual E-Type principle of "two steps forward, three steps back".

None of what follows is irrefutable and cast in stone, but I'd like to have been able to read this before I started this work, and hopefully it will help others - as I was unable to find any meaningful advice, anywhere, even from the professionnals.



Convinced that the only way to get the hood pan correct is to treat the alignment and position of the wooden spar separately from the metalwork issues, I made some struts to link the windscreen pillars to the windscreen central tie-bar.



There's a sleeve fitted over the tie-bar and resting on the mirror collar to locate the ends vertically, not visible on the pictures.



(The drawback is that you can't use the side clamping-hooks with the spars I made, it would be possible to make a better version than this with a bit more thought.)





In this way I could screw hard-up the wooden-spar in its ideal final position, using 14mm wooden spacers along its length, a stab-in-the-dark guess as representing the 18mm of rubber seal, once compressed ?

This method also enabled me to correct the ends of the wooden-spar so that its curve fitted better the curve of the screen top rail (relieving 1/4" off the curved ends with a chisel got me much better contact in the centre).



I'd added the 12mm steel strip along the whole front edge, plus up to 14mm on the angled and curved end sections, bashed and coaxed with a knife-edged dolly, so now by unfolding the hood with its modified hood-pan over the woodwork, I could see where the metalwork alignment needed treatment - whilst being able to rely on the wooden-spar position as a reference, which is just not possible if you don't have it fastened separately.



As an aside, I think making a structure to stiffen up the hood-panel was time well-spent as it is rather fragile ; with a jig like this you end up with a safe way of holding it in a vice when working on it, and have more chance of preserving its shape during any welding.







Judging the varying gaps between the hood-pan and the wooden-spar with a depth gauge, I added big penny-washers at each screw-point so as not to deform anything, which requires a road-map for subsequent re-fitting by Jack at BAS so that he knows what goes where.





I used a flat dolly and a ball-pein hammer to impress the sheet-steel in exactly the right position on the spar.





The wood-nuts have ended up M5 and M6 rather than UNF sizes, I found it better to hammer these in with a steel drift against a good anvil, rather than pull them in with a bolt, as that tended to skew the spikes and the threads are not terribly strong.





The multiple previous attempts by the PO at getting pan-to-spar screws in the right place make it hard to know which is the right one, so some careful hole-filling with wood-putty is necessary to leave just the correct ones visible.



After all this faff, I appear to have ended up with an apparently perfect front edge with regard to the elusive Heuer-Chrome-Trim-Objective ..........





........... tho' only Time And Trimming will tell.

HOWEVER, having had the doors in a million bits until yesterday, I was unable to check the overall shape of the hood assembly with relation to the door-glasses, and this has thrown up a Real Cold Shower - hence the Two Steps Forward, Three Steps Back comment.



The hood shape is quite different to the glass profile. See 6mm at the back, 17mm at the centre .............



Now, the fit was never very good before I did all this work, and 6mm spacers that had been fitted under the footings for the main hood pivots by the PO have not yet been put back.

But they would still be inadequate to correct such a gap anyway.

My work on the hood pan has not changed any of the elements of the rest of the hood, or altered the shape of the glass aperture - although I DID of course return the side-toggle clamps to their correct original fixing points, rather than use the re-drilled botches the PO had made higher up.

Anyone any intelligent advice or suggestions ?!

Do I just get door-glass made to suit the shape of the hood, or do I accept I've got incompatible parts from the wrong car in there somewhere and start trying to get the right ones ?

Who makes flat door-glass to measure, and what does swapping over the grips and clamps involve ?

Or do I make new footings for the main pivot bases, with higher cheeks, and raise the pivots by 15mm ?

Set fire to the whole lot and go for a swim ?

That was my first thought - just make new windows to fit the holes! Any domestic glazier should be able to make those to your template for a few Euros out of laminated glass or toughened if you prefer, and bevel the edges. Do cars need the BS number on the glass? I run a few coaches and they have to have the correct BS number etched into the glass, but my local glazier does that in about ten seconds with his magic etching paste.
Going off at a tangent, a fellow coach operator in Essex (where else?!) had one of his coaches fail its MoT because it had the incorrect BS number on one of his windows. So he nipped round the corner to his local glazier, had them etch the correct number in its place, and went straight back to the testing station, where the bemused examiner had no choice but to pass it. BS indeed!

Really helpful guy (Nick) at Halifax Windscreens

http://www.halifaxwindscreens.com/?COMM ... ut_to_size.

who says doing new side-glasses is well within their grasp, although says they should be in toughened glass not laminated and this makes for a longer turnaround.

Which might cock up my time schedule ...............

I could make the templates now, to fit what I've got on the untrimmed hood - which feels rigid and immovable !

However I'm aware that once trimmed the shape may change.

Anyone any experience of just how much those changes can represent please ?

Halifax? Don't they have any glaziers in France? Why do they need to be toughened rather than laminated? The only reason I can think of is that laminated glass may crack if you slam the door.
My instincts woud be to wait till ALL the trimming is in place before making templates for the glass, but this isn't really my field.