Screen off

One annoying fault on the Corvette when it arrived was a 4" crack in the windscreen.
The only way to change the screen on a Vette is to unbolt the entire frame from the car and take it apart from around the glass.
So that is what I did. Good news was that this gave me a chance to send the big cast and chrome screen pillars away for rechrome as they were very pitted.
Bad news is that I will need all new rubbers and seals to refit my new glass and also the pillar tabs broke during strip down (they always do). :-(

One advantage at least, is that now it will be easier to spray the car as there is almost nothing to mask off. Then when it comes back it should also be easier to fit the new dashboard pad (cover). That is one job I'm more than a little worried about; glueing it down in the right place and without any bubbles... 

Bonnet / Hood, whatever

For this posting I'm bringing together a couple of jobs on the bonnet / hood of the car.

The tasks at hand were to arrange for the bonnet retention required by the regulations and also to fabricate the bug screen / deflector as seen on the original car.

First off, I tackled the deflector. I started with a piece of aluminium right angle and offered it up. The immediate problem was that the bonnet has a significant crown to it and so a flat piece of aluminium isn't going to work. Here, a little bit of the old hand craft magic came into play. What I needed to do was convince the stiff right angle section to take on a curve. This I did by careful hammering on the verticle flange of the  piece. As this was squashed by the hammer blows (onto an anvil that was in a corner of the workshop) it effectively became longer than the horizontal leg of the section. The only way to reconcile this was for the section to bow so that the vertical flange could grow. It sounds easy on paper and for the most part actually was, it just then took a while with file, emery and wire brush to remove traces of the hammer marks from the soft aluminium.
Once I had the curve about right I realised that the upstand was looking a bit big so I got the jig-saw out and free hand cut it down to size. The edge was a little wavy so another bit of time was spent with the hand file to dress down the flange to a reasonably even edge.

All that was left was to pop a few holes through the aluminium and then through the bonnet and we were there, except that I decided that to protect the paint and take up and slight gaps I would stick on a layer of foam as well.

I will make up the plexiglass deflector itself later as the priority is to drill all the holes etc in the body so that it can be sent away for painting and will not risk being scratched when it comes back.

Next to the catches...

I would love to fit a set of bonnet catches like those seen on the original car but these beauties were I believe custom cast in the 50s and 60s in Italy and mainly used on Ferrari race cars.

Right now, unless you have the real things or are will to spend $443 + tax and shipping for replicas ( http://reoriginals.com/hoodlatchkitvintagestylewithringthatyoulift-b0244.aspx ) you are going to have to go with something else....

Having used a set of these simple (and I think elegant) pins to hold the boot (trunk) down I decided to go for the same at the front.

I found these rather nice brackets with nuts at work so I decided to use a pair for this job.

One problem was that the threads were not correct for the bonnet pins but fortunately I had the correct pilot drill and tap so it was a straight forward job to open them up to the right size.

To try and get the pins in straight and even, I made marks on each side of the bonnet opening and strung across with masking tape.

Then I removed the pins and placed the bonnet in place and put the tap back and marked up to drill through the clearance hole.

And here is the result!

The slight difference will come that while the boot can keep its catch assembly as it is easy for a marshal to press the button once they have undone the pins, at the front the original latches have to be removed as it isn't acceptable to have to reach into the car to pull a handle to pop the hood to get at a burning engine. Without those original catches, there is no spring to pop the bonnet up so I will have to find some springs to go around the shaft of the pins to pop up the bonnet enough to get fingers under to lift it up, but otherwise this is another job done!!

Cool Brakes

Or more accurately, brake cooling.
Having experience of what historic racing can do to Drum brakes I'm taking every opportunity to try and improve them.

First on the list is to add cooling ducts into the front panel from which cold air can be directed into the drums. Something that was noted in the French reports about the Corvette in 1962.

The large hole in the body was first scribed with dividers and then I chain drilled aound it before punching the middle out; very satisfying in a slightly Bruce Lee way!

The only trouble is that the back of the duct fouls the bumper bracket so this will need to be notched a little.




The rough edges on top and bottom of the duct will disappear behind the chrome 'mouth' that goes around this body opening.

More soon :-)