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 ?
