Tackled the near side mudguard this weekend - the bonnet is proving more intricate than the rest of the bloody car!
I first removed every shred of paint from the good section I wanted to retain, drilled out the spot welds holding the two sections together and air chiselled the two sections apart. I finally ground down the flange and applied Jenolite to all the bare metal before priming. No.1 Son assisted me with the separation.
When I came to spot welding the join the electrodes weren't in good shape, so I had a look for the new electrodes I'd made in the summer. Could I find them? Took me a bloody hour to find the box and on opening it I found this:
So I had to make another bunch of electrodes with the tap and die set, which took me a further half hour.
When I finally came to doing the spot welding, which should have been the easiest operation, I had numerous problems. For a start, because the equipment is so damned heavy that it takes 2 people to operate it - me to hold the equipment with one hand and to operate the lever than brings the electrodes together with the other, and another person to press the switch to get the current flowing. Whoever designed this piece of equipment needs shooting. The switch should be on the lever so one hand can perform both functions.
Then I couldn't get an arc across the electrodes. I'd taken the flange back to bare metal and used weld-through primer, so I was at a loss as to what caused the problem, but it may have been that I hadn't shaken the spray tin enough and the zinc that makes it weld-through hadn't dispersed enough. I got a few decent spots, but nowhere enough, so I resorted to using the arc welder.
A little later I was talking to my brother-in-law about what I was doing and mentioned the weld-through primer. I showed him the can and suddenly realised it was ordinary primer - not weld-through. Duh!
Here's the finished article, welded and sealed along the join with Tiger Seal.
As you can see, there is a number of holes for bolts in the mudguard. These are for the pivot tubes, which facilitate the bonnet in opening from the rear to the front, pivoting over the front bumper. Each hole needs a backing plate, but I only have one - the others must either be in my boxes of bits or lost.
Given the shape is rather simple and I can't be bothered rummaging through the boxes (they're bound to be lost, as the previous owner was intending to fit a fibreglass bonnet), I think I'll have a go at making a few, as they're £12 each from Rimmer's. I've got plenty of 1.6mm steel that's been salvaged from the car, but what I can't understand is that there are three sets of holes, yet I can only find a use for two of them. I need to go to the showroom in Wickwar where the owner has a pristine '73 GT6 that he allows me to inspect occasionally for information.
Stone protection on the inside of the wheel arch is an issue. Most paint the underside with a stone chip preparation that can be overpainted, but this got me to wondering whether anyone made fibreglass wheel arches. I couldn't find any on t'internet, but fibreglass bonnets must incorporate fibreglass wheel arches. I must admit that doing the n/s made me wish, just for a minute, there was a fibreglass option for the o/s.
No.1 Son thinks I should merely have bought both the inner and outer mudguard panels, but he doesn't understand the joy of trying to retain original panels than still have a lot of life in them - might just as well buy a GT6 that's already been restored by someone else. He's looking for a Mercedes C63 AMG at present - a 6 litre, 502 BHP supercar that can burn just about anything off the road.
I've managed to find a rotisserie for the tub for £160 in Newport, which is only about 40 minutes away. The owner was unfortunately in London last weekend, so I'll have to arrange collection next weekend.
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