Page Thirty-Seven - Blue Bonnet Blues or Minding More Gaps

 

If we were to put Alphie on some kind of laser measuring device, we might discover that his snoz is a tad shorter on the passenger’s side, maybe tweaked to the right a skosh – but no one is going to do that so back off!

Pardon the outburst, OK let’s back up a bit.  The first bonnet, the early model one, didn’t match the curve of the fenders (sorry, wings), and when I stood the early and late model hoods (sorry, bonnets) together, it was clear that the early model has a slightly more pronounced arch as it dives to the front.  Easy enough to fix, head to the shed and fetch the other one.  Give me a day to sand it down, pull some dents on the underside and weld up the holes the previous mate drilled trying pull out a dent, and apply the hammer and dolly to some wrinkles in the outer skin.  Great, sorted!

I tossed it on Alphie, bolted it to the hinges (not so easy with only one bloke), adjusted it a bit and eyeballed the fit, hmmmm…

Problem areas - essentially, Alphie's snoz is skewed
to the right one smidge

Good News, Bad News (of course):  Let’s start with the good.  The bonnet matches the curve of the wings, solid news.  The bad – the gaps are all over the place.  The passenger’s side front corner gaps are so tight that the bonnet almost wouldn’t close, but the gap at the scuttle (it’s a real thing, a British thing, look it up) are cavernous.  Front corners:  Driver’s side, acceptable. Passenger’s side, nonexistent, in fact this corner is the problem.  It throws the bonnet askew.  Back corners: Driver’s side, pinched to closed.  Passenger’s side, gaping!  Check the pic above.

Late and early bonnets
Early has a slightly
sharper curve

Assessment:  The passenger’s side of the snoz is slightly shorter (by a couple of millimeters) than the driver’s side, effectively making the bonnet appear crooked on the car.  Maybe I should have laid the bonnet in place when I was fitting the transplanted snoz…  Water WAY under the bridge, horse WAY out of the barn, ship WAY out of the port, add your favorite trite saying.

I fiddled with the hinges for more than an hour, moving the bonnet around within the adjustment margins of the hinges, but nothing would fix it. I could adjust the gap at the front passenger’s (right) corner, but it made the left front corner gap huge.  I could open one side of the scuttle corner, but it screwed up the other.  Finally, I could see that the right-side front corner was the key.  It has to open to get all the other gaps to play well together.  It’s fixable but not without cutting and welding.

Gaps before cutting wheel attacks

Driver's side gap at the scuttle - TIGHT!

Passenger's side at the scuttle - GAPING!
Somehow the pic makes the gap look smaller?

I chose to set the gap at the bonnet's front lip (since it’s the most immediately visible) and adjust everything to it.

Awesome Drawing:
The "Fix" isn't perfect

How to close/open the gaps?  Closing them?  Easy, weld in strips of sheet metal.  Opening them?  Easy too but at a price.  Cut a space the size of the cutting wheel edge along the pinched gaps, “contraction spaces” if you will, and pull the gaps open to close the space I had cut.  This method means more body work and filler, but it works.  Awesome drawing!

Passenger’s front corner.  After all, it’s throwing everything off and maybe, with it fixed, the other areas will magically fix themselves.  Car restoration requires a fair amount of magical thinking and delusion.

Contraction Spaces welded
The hole shows how much the gap had to open

First layer of filler to see how "fixed" it is
It will need fine tuning but the gaps are almost there

Driver’s side scuttle corner:  The open-the-gap-by-cutting-a-space method didn’t work here because the gap was too close and because two body panels meet here, which significantly stiffens the metal.  No way around it, cut the gap open and weld in metal to recreate the rain gutter. 

Assessment:  Without going into painful detail, cutting contraction spaces to open the gaps works, but it ain’t no miracle!  In some places, it makes the edge of the rain gutter where the bonnet nestles into the body more angled.  I made an awesome drawing to illustrate.  Along the driver’s side, I can live with the extra angle.  The pics (I hope) tell that story.  It also leaves some lumps where there were no lumps before.  All fixable, but tedious and time consuming.

Driver's side at scuttle - some bloody metal here

Driver's side at scuttle - corner rebuilt

Driver's side at scuttle with bonnet open
Rebuilt corner with JB Weld to hide everything

Lots of work commenced!  Cutting spaces to open the gaps; cut and fit sheet metal strips; weld in the strips and clean up the welds; pull open the gaps and weld the closed-up spaces; grind down the welds; hammer and dolly the spaces and welds to get things as smooth as possible; slather on some plastic filler in hopes I can hide all the rhinoplasty.

The gaps aren’t perfectly uniform, but if no one measures them, I’ll get away with it.  I can go back and massage some areas to get them more uniform, but the broad strokes are done.

The bonnet fits, and the gaps are good but not uniform
Needs fine tuning for uniformity and shimming to get surfaces flush