Jig Saw

The bonnet stiffener has arrived,  but there's a lot of work to do before I fit it, along with the headlamp cowls. All the paint has to come off the bonnet, top and bottom, and the bare metal needs covering with weld-through primer. There's a bit more work with the air-chisel too.

While it's nice to have the new panels coated in an impervious paint, it simply doesn't facilitate spot welding, meaning wherever there's a seam I'm going to have to use a rotary wire brush to remove the paint finish and replace it with weld-through primer.

All the bits necessary to rebuild the bonnet are now available to me, either new or restored.

It's getting there, slowly but surely.

For Christmas I got a rear wing, stainless steel seam finisher. To spread the cost of the postage on the stiffener I ordered the other one with the bonnet stiffener; however, I did my usual thing of buying the wrong part number. Instead of receiving a stainless one I received a black one.

Now, it could be that the black finisher is actually a painted stainless one, but there's only one way to find out. Below you can see the stainless one (top) and the black one (below).

I removed some of the paint from the recently ordered finisher with paint stripper  and, while it looks like it might be stainless, I dipped the bare metal in water and will leave it out in the weather to see if it shows signs of rusting. If it does then it's mild steel; if it doesn't then it's stainless and just needs polishing.

It it turns out to be mild steel, then It's useless to me, as there's nowhere I can reuse it, unless I find somewhere where a painted mild steel strip would add something. All the finishers on the car are either stainless or chromed.

Above you can see the wing and rear end finishers. While the wing finishers are available in stainless, the rear ones are chromed, which seems a bit senseless to me. They should make all the finishers from stainless.

Above is what I'm aiming for with the finished article, including the non-standard colour. However, I think I'll add chrome wire wheels.

On Thursday I'm going up to Sheffield to pick up a 3 litre BMW 114d Shadow Edition for No.1 Son, who has decided to switch out from his Mercedes CLA. As it happens, I bought a replacement HT loom for my Mercedes SL500 on e-Bay the other day and it's located just outside Leicester. I can swing by Leicester on the way back and save myself £25 postage. 

The loom is from a 1990 SL500, which puts it safely outside of the years when Mercedes used biodegradable material on their looms. Hopefully I can have the SL500 back on the road for summer, after it being off the road for 6 years.

I may sell it after the summer and use the proceeds to go to town on the GT6, possibly upgrading the engine to a 2.5 litre TR6 lump. If I do stick with the existing engine, I'm currently inclined to go for a exchange recon to save time. While I enjoy doing bodywork and spraying (within limits on the latter), I'm not that confident with things that are coated in oil and grease.