Bonnet trimming

 Well, this is it, one of the first parts where I truly have nowhere to hide. Everything done so far had some sort of tidying or refinement available. But when it comes to the bodywork alignment, it has to be spot on. And getting the bonnet and body to line up it has to be immaculate. So many cars I see at the kit car show where the panel fit isn't 'quite' there, and even a small mismatch is really visible.

So, first step was to find the edge. Problem is because the body is underneath the bonnet, and I can't go from underneath, so I needed to get a pattern from the bottom to the top. Cue some backing paper, previously purchased from Ikea;

With the bonnet up, I taped some paper to the body along the back edge. The front edge was cut to the edge of the body. Then I folded the paper back on the tape, dropped the bonnet and put the paper over the bonnet. That gave me an edge to cut to. 

Of course, there was no way I was going to cut right on the final line, so I pulled the line back 10mm and cut there.

Two terrifying hours with a multitool later, and I had a nice line and a chunk of fibreglass to take off. I did the same with the sides;

This pattern shows how little tolerance I had. I did measure the bonnet position based on the wheels, and found it's about an inch too far back. But if I had tried to claim that inch, the panel gap would have been too wide. To be honest, having the wheel an inch out is a fair swap for a tight panel gap!

The next step was to trim it to final size. But I wanted a frame of reference so I put a strip of tape where the body sat. This was the tape after the first six inches of trimming.

To be honest, this approach wasn't working. I didn't know where to stop cutting. So I made a small metal device that sits against the body edge, and transposes the position on to the bonnet. Then another length of tape to mark the edge. Unfortunately I should have taken more pictures of the process, I only took pictures of the end result;

I'm really happy with the line, apart from a couple of areas that need a little more sanding it's pretty much spot on. It's still held up by the corners as this is only between the two lines. Next step is to repeat the process on the corners, that should allow the bonnet to sit at the right height, then I can do the sides. 

Once it's all trimmed to this level, I'll need to bring it back maybe 2mm or so for the rubber edge trim. So thinking about it, I do have one more chance to fix issues. But getting it right now just makes things easier.

Some more photos, this was the same treatment done on the corners. Taped and filed back;

Filed, sanded and closed;

And the centre section now able to drop to it's correct height;

Well, I say 'correct height', it's actually dropped down a bit. So I need to come up with a way of taking out the unevenness between the bonnet and the body. Rubber would be the most obvious solution, but to get things to the right height for the sides I'm going to go 3D print some spacers. I need 1mm up to 7mm, that's how uneven it is under there! But it doesn't really matter how uneven it is underneath, as long as the top bit fits flush.

So that's it for the garage for today, and I'm hungry as well.