wing alignment

[chickenjohn]

Thanks John.... If Morris had taken as long aligning as that one took me they would only have produced 1 car a week

Did you get all the panels to fit so well before final top coat painting?? What did you have to do to the panels to get them to fit that well?

[PSL184]

Yes, everything was trial fitted before coming apart for painting. The problem is lack of adjustment, so I went round all the holes in the wings, front panel and rad panel and elongated them. This gave me some lateral movement. Also, the bottom of the wings would not line up correctly at the outer edge of the bumper so I had to weld a fillet into the front wing where it meets the rad panel so I could "move" the holes that the hockey sticks mount into.....

[chickenjohn]

Some great ideas there! I can do all the welding, paint and mechanical stuff, but the final fit and finish and lining up of the panels is where I need to learn a lot. (As you'll see if you see any of my cars!)

Can you post some more pictures please PSL?? especially of the wing/front panel/bumper area and the elongated mounting holes. This might seem like a thread hi-jack, but this sort of stuff could help the original poster as well.

[PSL184]

I'm not good with pics but I'll try to expand a little...
This pic shows a similar condition to Horace's car....
[frame][/frame]
To start off I slotted the 2 holes that you can see (both sides) that the rad panel bolts to the inner wing which also sandwiches the outer wing (so, holes in all 3 panel slotted to give movement left to right).

Outer wing fitted and shimed along the edges of the inner wing to give equal gaps (must be done with bonnet fitted)....You can see quite a wide gap on the left at the back of the wing but this seam is sealed anyway before final paint.

[frame][/frame]

I don't have a picture of the fillets, but, basically I cut some strips of steel that follow the shape of the wing around the hockey stick area. These were welded to the wing from the inside so that they overhang the original wing by about 10mm. The 2 verticle holes (you cant move the top inner one too far) were then redrilled into the fillet so that they are about 5mm more inwards. This area was then filled over so that the wing still looked original. This means you can move the bottom edge of the wing in or out to line up with the bumper (the wing will pivot around the top hockey stick hole).

If all goes well it should end up looking something like this....[frame][/frame]

I did tweak the bumper slightly before I was completely happy with the alignment just beneath the indicator but this was just some careful bending. The key position is to get the outer edge lip of the wing to be in the same place as the extremis of the bumper....
HTH but please ask if I have waffled and not been clear on anything.....

ps - Simples !!!!

[PSL184]

Here is a better one of the shimmed outer wings....

[frame][/frame]

All the areas in red primer received some form of bashing, bending, drilling, welding or tweaking

[frame][/frame]

[chickenjohn]

Thanks for taking the time to post those pics and explain.

Looks good- what did you do to the bonnet front edge to get it to fit so well to the chrome finisher on the top of the front panel?? Seems that area got some attention due to the red primer along the front of the bonnet.

[PSL184]

Just body hammers and dolly's and gentle persuasion.... You've reminded me now you mention it that I had to cut a notch in the edge return one side of the bonnet to be able to fold one corner down..... A quick zap with the MIG afterwards joined the edge back together again. If you lean on the corner you'l see the edge fold out which will give you the area you need to cut...