Sunday, September 14, 2008

Nose work

At last posting, I had mounted the nose. But then I found that the striker brackets for the nose latches were about an inch too far back to line up with the cutouts on the nose. To move them, I had to take the whole body back off to get good access for cutting and welding. The welding was not very hard, and after a bunch of grinding and some fresh paint, the brackets look pretty good.




With the brackets moved forward, Stephanie and I remounted the body this weekend. It was a little bit easier this time around because I knew a few things to watch out for. But I think I'll need a crew of at least 5 to put it on when painted, to avoid scratching it up.

I put the nose back on and did some preliminary alignment. The driver's side is riding low but looks good front-to-back. The passenger side is too far back and too high. I think it is touching the radiator and the throttle, so there's going to be plenty of work getting it to fit right.



I got the nose mounted again and started working on the latches. It took quite a bit of grinding on the body to get the cutout right, and the latches themselves have mounting tabs that won't let the latch lever lie flush with the body. Fortunately it is soft metal and I was able to reshape the mounting tabs using my shop press.



The driver's side latch is mounted and flush, but the passenger's side still needs a lot of work on the body.