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Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Nose Job - Second Surgery Prep

With the bulkheads in place, the next step is to add reinforcing ribs to the bonnet.


The steel angle in the foreground helps to ensure that the "wings" near the doors will be in the correct position once the fiberglass dries.  The ribs are once again made from foam core and are 1/2" wide and approx. 1" tall.  They are held in place with contact cement until the fiberglass dries.

I also need to add some mounting supports for the new auxiliary fog lights.  With the baffles in place I can build off of those.  The plywood will be encased in fiberglass when it's done.   I have not actually applied the fiberglass yet as it has been very cold in the shop the last few days.


Also needed are the hinges themselves.  The rough fabrication has been completed.  The top side of the hinges will "sandwich" the fiberglass and bolt through it.  The tube steel side of the hinge will be welded to the existing metal frame just below the fiberglass nose.  The brackets in the middle are the stops that will be bolted to each side of the metal frame to keep the nose from rotating too far.  After a test fit and attachment of the tube steel to the frame, I will paint these before final assembly.


The nose needs to rotate up and down, and so do the headlights, but independently of each other.  Therefore, the next set of brackets needed is to attach the headlights armature to the metal frame instead of the fiberglass.  The following photo shows how the armature was originally attached to the fiberglass.

The "tabs" on the fiberglass are no longer needed or wanted, so they have been cut off.


Now similar supports need to be created on the steel unibody. I've fabricated them so they fit just behind the existing splash guards at the front of the wheel wells.

Driver Side

Passenger Side
The passenger side has to fit around a bump-out for the alternator, so the bracket had to be curved in two directions.


To complete the brackets,  I'll need to fabricate four "L" shaped attachments that will actually fit around the armature pipe.

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Nose Job - First Surgery

I've decided to add a tilt-nose conversion to my car so that getting to all the under-hood parts is a little more manageable.  It will increase access to the engine bay from this. . .


To this!


The first step is to check that all the body panels are fitting properly and/or that you know they will fit.  The rear body was attached and the door skins installed to check the gaps.


As you can see, the passenger door fits pretty well at the strike side.  I decided to tweak it a bit, however to get the gaps even tighter.

The driver side did not.  There were large gaps.  I've already ground down the edge of the door to accept a fiberglass extensions.

This is what they look like now.
Passenger
Driver
Next I set the nose in place to check the front gaps.  They are a little harder to gauge as there is some warping to the fiberglass which keeps the nose assembly from staying put on both sides.  However, they appear to have too much gap.  I will adjust the final gap later once the tilt mechanism is complete.

The first step of the actual face-lift procedure is to permanently attach the original "hood".  I secured the hood from the bottom side with temporary screws.  I'll remove them and add a bridge of new fiberglass over the transition later.


Then I ground down a lip on the top surface of both the hood and the body and fiberglassed the hood into place.  Bondo and primer complete the transition.  I've cut a new opening in the "scoop" so that it is actually functional.  I'll mount a screen behind it later.



The next step is to reinforce the fiberglass nose so that it can withstand all that moving around without breaking.  It is designed to be supported by the metal unibody frame, so it needs some new bulkheads and other supports to be rigid enough to handle the new stresses.

I cut new baffles out of cardboard for each side to fit in the front of the nose beside the headlight buckets.  This is the most critical upgrade as it is where the hinges will be mounted and the weight of the entire nose supported when it is done.

(Note that I notched around the auxiliary light sockets - I've got a new set of aftermarket fog lights that will be going in there later.

The patterns were then transferred to 1/4" foam core, and coated with two layers of fiberglass matt, which provides a temporary non-structural framework for the fiberglass.  I had to brace the tall side of the assemblies until the fiberglass dried.


Cruisin'

Wow!  It's been a while since my last post!  Over two years!

I've done some work since then, but only in very small bits and pieces until the last week or so.

I purchased an electronic ignition module and got it installed.


Of course one of the little posts had to drop down into the distributor requiring the removal of the distributor, turning the engine back over to 6 degrees of dead center, and aligning the distributor again. . .

I also installed a new aftermarket cruise control system.






















The system uses a  pulse generator which connects to the speedometer cable.  It is a fairly bulky attachment (+/- 4" long) and I had to shorten the original cable sheath a bit to get it to fit in under the steering gear assembly.  The good news is that it works!  The bad news is that now my speedometer doesn't (apparently the install somehow over-stressed the hairspring).

As a safety feature, the system requires a cut-off switch for both the brake and the clutch.  The brake attaches to existing brake light wires, but the clutch required installation of a new contact switch (above right).






There are not many options for mounting the throttle linkage connection because of the low clearance in under the hood, and the configuration of the throttle linkage arms.  I finally settled on the location shown.  It is relatively unobtrusive, and appears to work well.
Even so, it was very tight getting a nut in between the existing linkage rod seat and the bottom of the radiator overflow strut.








The control module fits nicely in the driver's side bulkhead just in front of the firewall.

The cabin controls replace the original turn signal bar.  I chose this particular model system because it has one of the most convenient and unobtrusive controls.  (unlike the factory AC knobs in the background - that's a separate project coming later. . .)


I also installed my new replacement mirrors: