Final Reassembly
The first step in assembly was to get the rear wings on the car. They, as well as the fronts,
were hanging over saw horses. The fronts were pretty stable but the rears, having very little
mounting flanges, were rather precarious. The slightest bump could knock one off ending with
disastrous results. The bonnet was alone on my work table, also a bit vulnerable. The bonnet
aprons were safely on top of my shelving units. Light buckets and other small parts were
safely inside the car.
Before anything could be attached, however, I felt like it was necessary to polish the body as well as the part to be attached. See polishing here. With that done, I finally got the rear wings on. I had in storage enough welting for the rears but had to punch holes for the bolts, of course. Sometime after primer and before painting, I cut the necessary holes and fit the new tail lights to the rear wings. Here they are finally installed.
With the rear wings safely installed, the fronts were the next order of business. This was a
bit trickier as they are bulky, heavy and initially only attached at the rear quarter or so.
Therefore, I first partially installed the brackets to the frame that support the headlights
as well as the wings. Then I could sort of hang the wings on the supports while getting one
of the bolts at the back installed. After the wings were loosely in place, the aprons were
next. They attach to the wings as well as a single screw at the top, back corner. The left
photo here shows some of the detail of the aprons. They fill the gap between the bonnet,
grille and wings.
Then came the grille. It attaches to the aprons along the sides. There is another apron at the bottom of the grille that attaches to the frame. Then the slam panel at the top also extends along both sides and attaches to the aprons. Most of these bolts are hard to reach at best. Some required a helper to be able to get both sides. A couple of them could only be tightened by holding the nuts with a small vise grip while working on the bolt. Finally I added the badges to the sides of the aprons and assembled the badge and latching unit on the bonnet. The right photo Shows the front end with the head lights and side lights in place and the bonnet just resting on but not attached to the hinges yet. I have not devised a plan for that yet.
This gets most of the body back together, except for the bumpers, running boards and rubber
parts. The actual bumpers I will leave until later as they do have to be replated. That, I
will leave to their own chapter. I will include the
irons or brackets next. The rears were installed without any significant issues other than
the fuel line interfering with access to the bolts on the left side. The fronts, however,
were another story entirely. I knew that the left side was a bit longer, causing the bumper
on that side to be farther from the wing than the right side. When I first got them installed
and the bumper in place, I also discovered that the hand crank hole in the center of the
bumper was about an inch to the right of the corresponding hole in the grille. That much
misalignment was, of course, unacceptable.
This meant bending or reshaping the irons enough to move the bumper into alignment with the grille. Those things are 1/4 inch thick spring steel. Bending would require a lot of heat. It turned out that my torch will produce just enough heat to get then soft enough to bend but it only lasts for 3 or 4 seconds before cooling too much. That is not enough time to safely dispose of the torch so bend with the other hand and certainly not enough time for any measurements. Of course I didn't know how much to bend anyway or what to measure. This was to be a trial-and-error procedure. The first bend was actually a little too much on both. A second bend, doing one at a time, produced saticfactory results. Here they are, attached temporarily. They still need to be polished and chrome plated. I have not found the box with the overriders yet although I know it is here.