Adjusting bonnet / urgent

[Durango2k]

I managed to put the bonnet back on its hinges on the car. See pics below.

I found 3 places where it became a bit troublesome:

a) the horizontal closeup against the body / front scuttle is fine, maybe a bit too wide on the left, but can be pulled to fit. Fine. Now, if this gap is fine, the rear ends of the wings overlap on the lower rear edge.
Now, I‘d say, „put it higher on the front to turn it in“, but I cannot put any more shims on top of the front upper hinge- the horizontal bolts do not permit this. End of adjustment, somehow. So, question: cut the wings to fit ?

b) the wheel arches: just where the fromt vertical sill stops are, the flanges inside the wings end. This means they literally hit the sill- I think I can either cut their lower edge of ?, or loosen them and glue them in a bit forward ? The edge of the wing itself does fit, it has the correct length. The rear muguards sit in front of the sill finishers / there is a ridge / edge on top of the finishers for the mudguards to fit in. Correct ? How to heal this ?

c) the left wing stands pround outside for about an inch. But I found the culprit, it‘s upper flange is bent. If I bent it inwards into the wing it will fit better, plus I do not have fitted the top rear stiffener. Nor did I fit the rear locks and pins yet. A short trial-fit showed me it will be the same as on the other side- wing is too long on the rear lower edge, but curvature is fine.

Carsten

[Geoff Green]

Carsten,

Looks good in the photos of the center section to cowel gap and I would like to see the side where the fender fits the sill to the rear of the wheel well horizontal gap from wheel well to firewall vertical - both sides. Check Monocoque Metalworks fitting the bonnet. Find the center of the rear bonnet and make a line about a foot long on the center and sight to the wiper - should be center to the wiper post. Next place something straight in the joint between fender and center section and see where it meets the "A" post. should be the same on each side. Once the center is correct you can adjust the fenders. Out at the bottom bend in or out. Uneven horizontal gap add or remove shims or bend - replace the subframe piece.

[Durango2k]

Hi,

What if would put another shim under the front triangle frame ? There is one shim on each side between the front frame and the picture frame. Put more there ? Would lift the nose and equalize the overlapping issue. Question is how the lower line between fender and sill would look like then.

Will investigate more today. It‘s snowy today, unheated shed as pictured, so time is limited to what I can suffer...say 2 hours no more :-)

Will get back with more pictures.

Carsten

[Durango2k]

More pics:













I talked to a german forum member today. He convonced me to set the main horizontal gap to 6 mm, because paint would fill up at least 1 mm, plus the car needs some flexibility there. The rest of the car is set to 3 mm on the doors and 2-3 mm on the rear door, thats all painted (=final values).

After I did that, the gaps suddenly made a lot more sense, I think the only edge where I may need to cut a bit away may be the left wing‘s rear lower vertical edge. See pics.

Then he also convinced me that I have to assemble the inards before I can go on- the weight plus the effect of the parts being bolted together will deform the bonnet a bit, hence it makes no sense to trim it to final standard, only to discover this did not go well because of the inner parts being added later.

So, next job, already started, fit innards and glue the flanges.

Would you say that I should assemble it fully, then glue the long centre part flanges, put it on the car and let it settle there for 2 days (its really cold now hereover) ?

Carsten

[christopher storey]

Carsten : whatever else you do, don't rush this bit . The professionals can take up to 40 hours work to tailor the bonnet to the individual car . On the FHC that I restored ( 1E 20357 on xkedata with lots of photos ) Hutsons took that long and that was with a brand new heritage bonnet. Amongst other things they did ( and this is probably directly relevant to your problems ) was to cut off the wired edge at the bottom of the wings, take a little bit out of the depth of the wing, and re-weld the wired edge in place. There was also a good deal of lead loading done to the forward flange of the sill to make wings and sills match up

[Jeremy]

Ditto. Mine involved weeks of work and delays. This was with a bodyshell rebuilt by Robey, with a brand new Robey bonnet, and TT (the paintshop) still had to send it back to them for yet more fettling as the bonnet/side fit wasn't good enough to start the painting.....

[Steve Marshall]

I have the my original bonnet, shell and frames, and none of them have been seriously dinged (shell has been dipped and stripped, so I know).

My bonnet is still a few mm skewed.

The shims give up and down and fore and aft movement. Is there any lateral side-to-side movement on the front mountings when all of the bolts have been loosened off?

Steve

[MSM]

Steve

There is a little lateral side-to-side movement of the front of the bonnet because the hinge fixing bolts go through either enlarged or slotted holes into the nut plates retained in the bonnet. You can't push it by hand, I seem to remember using a long screwdriver as a lever maybe against the bonnet mounting frame to move it when I was doing some adjustments.

I hope that is of some help.

[paulsco]

Hi Steve,

This may help.

Half way down the page I describe how I move the bonnet sideways a small bit:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=12044&p=97831&hilit ... ing#p97844

Paul

[Steve Marshall]

Thanks guys I will report back.