More Bonnet

Having nothing better to do, I tackled some more of the GT6 bonnet yesterday and opened a can of rust worms.

Started by separating the headlamp cowl from the upper bonnet by drilling the spot welds and air-chiselling along the seam.

I should have done the drilling from the inside to retain as much metal on the upper bonnet panel as possible, but access was the issue, so it had to be the front. In any case, it does provide me with readymade holes for plug welds, rather than spot welds.

So far, so good - until I started carving away the unwanted metal. Below you can see the new panel that needs inserting and the old metal that needs cutting away.

Once I'd exposed what was underneath I saw that a lot of welding had already been done at some stage in the past in order to bodge a repair, leaving rust traps along the sides of the bonnet stiffener that runs along the underside of the front of the bonnet.

Now the near-side is often in a worse condition than the off-side, due to it being the part of the car nearest gutter puddles, but I feared the off-side, in this instance, would be as bad, necessitating a new bonnet stiffener (shown in the photo below) at £70.

Starting to think I should have bought a good condition, 2nd hand bonnet. However, I continued to remove the old panel to see if there was any scope for a DIY repair to the stiffener.

Not a chance - it had already been patch bodged. The shape is too complex for me to attempt a repair and, if the other side is just as bad, £70 seems a reasonable price. I continued by exposing and drilling out all the spot welds along the front of the stiffener before attacking once more with the air-chisel.

It was rotten right along the entire length. Just as well I decided to remove it completely.

Here's what I need, which I have ordered, along with some other parts to spread the cost of postage, which seems to be the same whether you order one or ten parts.

Removing the rotten stiffener necessitated me having to remove the off-side lower panel and mudguards which, having done it before on t'other side, was much easier and quicker. I still have to clean up the spot welds along the off-side seam where the upper bonnet joins the lower repair panel.

Below you can see I clamped the cowls in place, just to see what it looks like.

I'm starting to worry a tad about rigidity. It's fine attacking both sides, but I could end up with a skewiff bonnet if I'm not careful.

Not a bad Saturday's work, although what I was expecting to be a couple of hours work turned into 7.

Next job is reconstituting the off-side mudguard, but that should be easy.