15th Anniversary MKIV build thread - TROJAN

[carlewms]

David,

Looking great and as usual a couple of questions ...

1. The mirror looks great and also looks like it gives you a wide view. Where did you source it?

2. GPS Conversion. Do the replace your speedo or modify it to include the GPS? I am considering it but want all the guage bezels to remain the same

Thanks for posting.

Carl

[David Hodgkins]

David,

Looking great and as usual a couple of questions ...

1. The mirror looks great and also looks like it gives you a wide view. Where did you source it?

2. GPS Conversion. Do the replace your speedo or modify it to include the GPS? I am considering it but want all the guage bezels to remain the same

Thanks for posting.

Carl

Thanks Carl,

The mirror is a generic one that I got from Kragen that snaps on to the back of the standard mirror:





I got the idea to run it this way from John Tongish, a road and track warrior, as well as leader of the Ageless Avengers.

re: The speedo, I got an RMA from them and sent the existing speedo so I assume it will be the original case. They did the original face so I don't know if they will create a new one or can just punch holes for the LEDs in the original face.

[David Hodgkins]

I'm really behind in my updates. Yesterday was eventful but I've got a week of stuff to post about first so let's get to it.

I added an inline fuse for the music amp. Looks like I need a tie at the top to clean up the shroud a bit:



Next task: What's wrong with this picture?



Looks pretty good, except for the dangling loom needed for the rear license plate lite. So I added a missing clip to the trunk hoop and routed the wires up through the center of the trunk lid. In order to chase the wires at the hole I cut a 1"x24" piece of aluminum flashing material (AKA the strip), cut a hole in one end and put a little english on it to make it easy fit in between the upper and lower layers of the fiberglass:



This also helped me verify that there is no obstruction all the way down into the structural bends of the lower layer. I drilled a hole that matched the inner diameter of a grommet, plunged the strip down until the strip hole lined up with the hole in the lid and then stuck a wire through the hole in the strip and pulled it up to where the light is. Then repeated the process for the second wire. Then I attached the wires. Here's the result:







That reminds me, I gotta make a fill panel for that hole...

continued...

[David Hodgkins]

The next piece I worked on was the nose aluminum. The paper templates got me part way there but I needed to start working with the aluminum so I decided to do each side separately and then create a third template that would be a single piece. So I started with the driver's side:



...and made the passenger side, then joined them together with some rivets:



I wasn't worried about the fit to the body as much as I was trying to match them at the radiator but dang:



After I had the pieces riveted together I had a closer idea of the final design needed so I drew it out on a single piece of AL flashing and cut it out with the bandsaw. At that point I decided to strip some of the failing bulb seal off and just use the hard rubber instead where it meets the radiator. I then went through a few trial testings and adjustments trying to get it in there just right. I ended up with this shape:



Laid out in the opening it looks like this:







Pretty good, right? Well, not so fast.

[David Hodgkins]

The problem with the wrap-around shroud the way I fitted it is that the flashing material is too flimsy and needs additional support behind it. I had not mounted the factory nose aluminum and the radiator - I soon found out - was not in a location that would work with the stock nose aluminum so I made the decision to re-mount the rad. Before doing that however I had previously made an appointment to get the alignment done so the next day I drove TROJAN over to the alignment shop. I left the car there and a short time later they called to let me know there was a problem. The outer control arms I had installed did not match the diameter of the hole in the steering arm of the spindle and was bottoming out. I called FFR and confirmed that the outer tie rod needed is a standard '87-'93 mustang part so I went and got the needed pieces and delivered them to the alignment shop. It turns out I had put on left over pieces from my MKIII build, which had probably gotten mixed in with the MKIV parts when we first moved the car to my house after being in storage for 4 years.

The car was delayed for a day so the next day I went over to pick it up. It was late in the afternoon so the plan was to leave my truck at the alignment shop, drive the roadster to my shop and then catch a bus back to the alignment shop so I could pick up the truck. It was during this procedure that a minor disaster struck. First, I ran out of gas in the parking lot of the alignment shop. I thought I had more gas in the car but with the speedo not being there to record mileage there was no way to know if the shop had driven it extensively. I think not, because the car has no plates. Anyway, they gave me some gas and I was on my way...

For about a mile.

On my way home the car lost all power and then the engine just died. I coasted it into a parking lot and got on the horn with my crack tech team of Frank Maslowski, Mike Forte, Eric Hansen and Karen Salvaggio. We quickly diagnosed the problem as fuel pump related. Now, what I SHOULD have done is just call AAA and have the car towed, but I ended up running all over town trying to get a new fuel pump. Several hours later I was back at the car with tools installing the fuel pump. Luckily, I had not riveted the access panel in place yet so I was able to complete the swap. I hopped in and fired the motor. Sounded great for about 10 seconds and then died again! This time I came to my senses and called for a flatbed. 45 minuted later it was loaded and on it's way the last mile to the shop, 4.5 hours after I had left the alignment shop:



The next day I took a voltmeter to the electrical connection to the fuel pump in the harness and discovered it had no power. I traced the wire to the fuse box and discovered I had improperly connected the power wire from the ECU for the pump to the rear harness. Turns out the whole thing was just a loose wire. Grrr....

After that debacle, I decided to finish up the wiring by setting up the flashers. The way the wiring diagram looks vs the way I ended up wiring seemed to be a little different but the bottom line is that I took the pink flasher wire from the harness and attached it to one side of a DPST (Double Pole, Single Throw) switch, The switch has 4 poles on the back. In the ON position, two sets of the poles have continuity. So the 2 on the left are connected, and the two on the right are connected. The way I connected it, I hooked up the flasher to one of the poles on the left. I ran a wire from the other left pole to one of the right poles and that pole was piggybacked out to the left turn signals and I hooked up the right signals to the final pole. So when you flip the switch, power comes in through the flasher wire on one side of the switch and then gets jumped to the other side where turn signal wiring is. Long story short, the flashers now work. It's the wrong style switch, but functionally sound. I'm ordering a new DPST switch from FFR this AM.

Moving on, I had a nice surprise waiting on the doorstep when I got home last night. A package from Breeze with my ultra expensive, but very nice side mirrors. had finally arrived. It's not a story worth repeating but they had traveled to length of the continent 3 times before I finally got them! They went on in about 5 minutes, and look really nice:







Next, back to nose aluminum...

[carlewms]

David,

Sounds like your "fun" meter was pegged high!

The mirrors do look very nice.

Carl

[frankeeski]

For the record David. DPST is actually "Double Pole-Single Throw"

And as much as I hate to say it, I told you it sounded like a wiring issue.

[David Hodgkins]

David,

Sounds like your "fun" meter was pegged high!

The mirrors do look very nice.

Carl

You got that right! Although I see quotes around fun, I'm still tempted to use another word although it might be against the rules here.

Frank, thanks for the correction. I edited my post above so I don't sound like an idiot (too late I know).

[David Hodgkins]

Let's see, where did I leave off? Oh yeah, nose aluminum.

As I mentioned before, I decided to re-mount the rad and use the factory aluminum as a base before adding the wrap-around shroud on top of it. So I unscrewed to top of the rad and used zip ties to raise the bottom of the rad to stock height and managed to "scooch" the rad over until it was centered. It wouldn't move over any more so I decided to mock up the metal and see how it fit.

Well, I had to trim the passenger side piece but everything else looked OK so I drilled and cleco'd it all in place. Here's how it looked:







Not bad, not bad at all. The bummer is that now I have to get those pieces powdercoated. So the panels were taken out and I will take them over to the PC guys today. It should be a week at least before they are back and I can continue to finish off the front.

Meanwhile, this arrived yesterday:



This is the original sppedo, but with all new innards. You can see the indicator lights and the speedo now has GPS. (That's a hair, not a scratch.) (EDIT: turns out that yep, that's a scratch. Came that way. Do I delay for a week or two to send it back? Law of diminishing returns says I got more important things to do.) I toyed around with adding "2 of 15" but decided against it. I'll start wiring it in today.

After the speedo is in I will be READY for the BAR and B&L exams!

[David Hodgkins]

Last night I dropped off the nose aluminum to the local PC guys instead of the place that is further away. The nose aluminum wont be the EXACT color as the rest of the pieces but no one will ever see it anyway since I plan to cover it with the new wrap-around aluminum. So it will be back before the weekend.

The big project last night was wiring the speedo, which means I had to tear into the dash again. But in addition to that, there was another issue to take care of.

You see, I've been holding out on you guys a little bit. I've been experiencing some electrical gremlins in the dash, which started when I picked up the car from alignment. The volt gauge stopped working completely(no movement or gauge lighting) and the background lighting on all the gauges stopped working. Some might have reacted to that by blaming the alignment shop; after all, the problem only started after I dropped off the car to them. That would be the easy thing to do. But instead I decided to take the dash wiring apart as needed to see if there was anything user/installer related that needed to be remedied. And indeed I found that a very small wire on the dimmer attached to the inverter that drives the lights had pulled away from the soldered connection. My soldering iron was on it's very last legs so I jetted down to Ace Hardware for a replacement and some small gauge flux core solder. I was able to melt the existing solder so the wire "caught" the connection and the lighting on the gauges started working again. The connection was delicate but worked. The voltmeter was lighting now but still not working. I was hopeful that after everything was connected that it would start working so I proceeded to wire up the indicator lights. The high beam would be driven by the high beam switch which already had a wire attached to it ready to go. For the turn indicators I decided to integrate those wires off the speedo into the flasher harness and make the connection on the back of the flasher switch because the poles are the big kind, not the little bitty ones hanging off the back of the turn signal switch. I also ran the power cable from the speedo to the battery side of the ignition switch so it would have constant power. This is recommended by SpeedHut so that the GPS acquires satellite signal very quickly. If the gauge had to power up with the engine start it can take up to a minute to make that connection. SpeedHut states that the draw on the battery is very small, at 25 micro amps so draining the battery shouldn't be an issue. Here are some pics - as usual - of the install:



Background lighting and LED indicator for brights working...



Speedo in it's new home:



I sync my pics using google photos and every once in a while they will automatically create an animated gif if several of your photos are very similar. Google made a gif of my turn indicators flashing when I was trying to capture them in the on position for a shot from my cell phone. It's a little shaky but still pretty cool:



I didn't get a chance to wire up the antennae so I'll be buttoning up the dash tonight. Oh, and once everything was wired up the voltmeter started working! It's connection is fragile as well so this AM I called SpeedHut to order a new inverter. That should give a better connection to the voltmeter and the dimmer wiring will be more solid. BTW I mentioned the bezel scratch and sent a pic to their tech support guy and they are sending out a new bezel and face lens as well! Gotta love SpeedHut; great customer service!

Finally, here's a shot of the speedo lit up and indicators working, in case the pic above is too shaky for you to look at:

[Brett33]

The GIF is pretty impressive. The indicator lights are an impressive custom touch. I always look forward to seeing your updates.
Brett

[David Hodgkins]

Thanks Brett!

[David Hodgkins]

Last night was spent working on dash minutia. The dash light wiring harness is going to be replaced as soon as the new harness comes in. I still have intermittent power to my voltage gauge and I'm hoping the new harness will fix the issue. After a call to FFR revealed that they use the 6 pole switch for the flasher I replaced the first flash switch I installed with a 6 pole I had that had a switch handle that matched the rest of the switches in the cockpit. It's the switch on the far right in the shots below.





The nose aluminum should be back from PC today so working on that install (again) will occupy my time tonight.

Technically though, I'm ready for inspection!

[carlewms]

David,

Where did you or will you put the antenna?

carl

[David Hodgkins]

David,

Where did you or will you put the antenna?

carl

Carl,

The antenna is currently magnetically attached to the back of the dash hoop. They say the antenna works under fiberglass, ans my MKIII is set up that way. If there is any issues acquiring signal my second choice is behind the mirror on top of the body but hopefully it won't come to that...

[MPTech]

I installed my GPS antenna on top of the DS FB, under the body. Works great! No issues.

[David Hodgkins]

I installed my GPS antenna on top of the DS FB, under the body. Works great! No issues.

Yep Yep, good spot too...

[David Hodgkins]

I spent Saturday and part of Sunday setting up Christmas decorations so I didn't get as much time on the build as I would have liked but I did knock out one much overdue project. My rear 3 link has 2 lower trailing arms that attach between the frame and the rear axle. These were not lubed as part of the initial assembly so I went to add grease to the first of 4 zirc fittings and the grease gun pulled it right out. The zirc fittings that came on my trailing arms are simply too small for the holes in the arms, which BTW are now tapped. So I decided to drill and tap the hole and put in a slightly larger zirc fitting. Here's a zirc fitting I PLACED in the grease hole:



As you can see it's already at the top of the threads and hasn't even engaged yet. So I stepped up to an 8mm x 1mm zirc fitting. Here's the difference between the two:



In order to drill out the holes in the arm I first had to disassemble the trailing arms and remove the rubber from the ends. The procedure I used was to press out the metal center tube and then remove the rubber pieces. Since I don't have a shop press I removed the tube with the help of a vice, screwdriver, some bolts a washer and a hammer. I just put a washer and a bolt over the screwdriver and plunged the screwdriver into the tub and put the arm in a vice. Then I just tapped the top of the screwdriver and drove out the tube a little bit before stopping to add another nut to the screwdriver.



It took 5 nuts to drive the tube out:



After the tube was out I removed the outer rubber pieces by using a small screwdriver to GENTLY pry away the rubber in one spot...



And then shoved the side of the screwdriver into the gap and work it around the circumference of the rubber piece:



This brought the rubber piece out about 1/8" and from there I could work the rest out with my hands.

After you remover the outer rubber there is still a piece in the center. I looked around and found that the center piece from my polisher had a perfect diameter to fit just inside the hole:



So I stuck a short screwdriver through that and used a vice to press out the center piece.

continued...

[David Hodgkins]

continued...

At first the center piece looks like a sealed bearing (especially when it's in the hole) but I think it's just thick rubber:





Once the rubber is removed I drilled and tapped the hole for the new zirc fitting. The hole was drilled using a size "I" drill. You can't get these and Home Depot. I had to go to a specialty hardware store for the tap and the drill bit:



Tap the hole:



Once the hole was tapped it looked like this:



Much better. I was then able to put a small bit of blue locktite on the new zirc fitting and install it in the arm:



The new fitting does not intrude into the arm hole:



From here I assembled the arms again using liberal amounts of grease. Unlike dis-assembly, the ends go back together easily by hand when all the parts are covered in grease. Just watch out for the outer rubber ends, they like to pop off! Once everything is reassembled I put the arms back in their location.

One final note: make sure you support the axle with chocks during disassembly! I had the chassis supported with the sissor lift so there was no weight on the rear wheels and I had the wheels chocked to keep the rear axle in place. If the rear is in the air without support at the wheels when you remove the control arms the axle will shift violently toward the rear of the car once you get the bolt out of the arm, particularly on the passenger side. Ask me how I know!

[ehansen007]

Damn you're thorough!.

[2bking]

Nice work David but I have got to ask why the need of a grease fitting in a rubber suspension part?

[rcflash]

great solution to the problem

[David Hodgkins]

Damn you're thorough!.

It's just because it's not a "stock" part of the build and I wanted to document it.

Nice work David but I have got to ask why the need of a grease fitting in a rubber suspension part?

Well, it IS a suspension part that rotates, and has grooves for grease; plus it came with a zirc fittings on it already. They just didn't fit. So I modified the arm so the zirc fittings would thread into the holes properly.

great solution to the problem

Thank you sir.

[David Hodgkins]

Last night I worked on re-setting the radiator. It had to be moved over in order to work with the stock nose aluminum which meant re-drilling the upper mount with the body on. I used a piece of piano hinge centered between the two original radiator tabs. I had to do this without the hood on to be safe and a key to being able to drill the holes in the radiator mounting edge was to use a foot long 3/16" drill bit which JUST clears the hood opening. If you look carefully you will also see the piece of aluminum I used as a spcer on the upper edge to raise the hinge up to be even with the rad aluminumHere are a few pics:







The nose aluminum was picked up from the PC yesterday and I was able to install it. I'm holding off on riveting through the opening in the nose for now since the rad is supported by the breeze lower rad mount. The aluminum I put in last night will be overlaid with a new piece of aluminum that wraps around the opening like I showed a few posts ago but since I changed to location of the rad the piece I made earlier won't work. So it's back to the drawing board for that. Anyway, here are some pics of the new nose aluminum:

[frankeeski]

Just my thought on rigidly mounting the radiator, don't do it. While the hinge on the top allows the radiator to swing forwards or back, the dissimilar metals are going to expand and contract at differing rates. The aluminum is going to grow when hot and shrink when cool. At some point it will fatigue and it will leak. All OE manufacturers use cushion mounts on the bottom of the radiator and some sort of loose capture brackets on the top. Just some food for thought.

[Jeff Kleiner]

...I'm holding off on riveting through the opening in the nose for now...

David,
I no longer rivet the front of the nose aluminum ""floor" to the body---put a piece of bulb seal on the front edge of the aluminum and simply tuck it into the channel that exists in the nose between the radiator opening and oil cooler scoop.

Great work on the details my friend!

Jeff

[David Hodgkins]

Frank, I spoke with FFR and sent them pictures of the rad mount and they think that it's fine. I'm going to stick with it for now. I'm using the Breeze lower mount so it's now completely rigid mounted.

Last weekend I decided to flip the car around and work on some trunk details. If you've been following along you may remember I had an issue with the fuel pump when I got the car aligned. Well now was as good a time as any to put the original pump back in, so I completd that task. After that I decided to finally put the cover plate on. Nothing fancy here, just applied some SharkHide and then drilled out the mounting holes. I also decided to cut down the battery cover so that it would sit flush with the trunk floor. I used some plastic to act as a insulator between the battery poles and the top of the battery box and it is secured with some button-head screws.



I also started working on a cover plate for the hole in the bottom of the trunk lid. Here's the hole:



And here's the piece I cam up with:



It's a little oversize but I figure I can trim it to final size after I gussy it up a bit. I'm still deciding what to do to it but I'm thinking of either going fancy with engine-turning or just polishing it. At this point the plan is to make a prop-rod and drilling a hole in the cover to secure the top of the prop-rod, which would have a rubber tip. OR, I might do something completely different. Haven't decided...



PS Oh and finally - just because - Here's a few pics of how the car looks now from the rear. The new shifter arm came in over the weekend so the shifter boot goes on tonight. Still waiting on the return of the voltage gauge...

[David Hodgkins]

Last night I didn't get too much time to work on the car as a friend asked me to use my lift to replace his fuel sender but I did replace the shifter arm and I managed to get three of the four screws in for the shifter boot. Those things are almost impossible to attach with nuts and bolts! Self tapping screws would have been so much easier, but then I wouldnt have the button heads I want. Anyway, as usual, PICS!







I got an email from speedhut; the Voltage gauge is on it's way home! I should be DONE within a week!

[David Hodgkins]

Just to articulate what needs to be done still in order to be DONE DONE:

Wipers (holding off until next year)
Seat heaters (will probably be done this winter some time)
Wrap-around nose aluminum
Shift ball (need to find one with the Trojan Logo)
Install voltage gauge
Shoulder harnesses (trim rings and harness bar ordered and on their way from Breeze)
Door pockets (ordered and on their way from Finish Line)
Trunk, cubby and glove box carpet
B&L and BAR inspections
Custom front bumper hoop insert (future project)
Stickers(!)
FFR Plaque and 15th Anniversary Badges
EDIT: Added upper rad/body shroud


I believe that's the complete list. OK so maybe I won't be DONE DONE next week, but I should be able to knock the majority of the list off before Christmas, with the exception of the wipers.

[David Hodgkins]

No pics today, sorry.

Last night I worked on the nose aluminum and worked on an upper rad/body shroud. I'm not really sure what material I want to use to finish the nose aluminum. The flashing is OK but it cant be polished or engine turned. Yes, the plan is (was?) to put racing stripes on the nose aluminum. But the flashing is textured. If I go with that material I'd just wipe it with some sharkhide and install it. I'm not sure if there is an aluminum sheet out there with the flexing properties of the flashing though so I'll be paying a visit to the metal supplier today...

Brake and light inspection set for tomorrow!

[David Hodgkins]

(Still gotta fix up the spark plug routing)







Today I thought I'd lead with a few shots I got last night. My brother took the roadster to the brake and light inspection; IT PASSED! Afterwards he didn't want to load the car onto the lift by himself so he parked it outside for the day. I normally get to the shop after 4pm and when I got there today the sun was setting and the lighting was too good to pass up. The car's not quite done yet but looked pretty good in the fading light! Regarding the inspection, only two concerns were noted. The emergency brake cables route under the frame and touch a frame bracket, and the brakes are a little soft. I'll fix the cable routing using the nylon guides described in edwardb's build thread and bleeding the brakes again ought to take care of the soft pedal issue.

Last night I created my 3rd version of the fan shroud after I decided the second one I created with the proper curvature in the front was just too short. I then decided to set up the polishing "station" so I could prep the upper fan shroud and the trunk lid hole cover:



The upper fan shroud took so long to make I didn't have much time left for polishing. I did get one pass on each piece and this is where they stand as of now:



I should be able to finish up the polishing tonight and might even be able to engine turn them. If that happens they will for sure be installed this weekend, along with new nose aluminum (actually trying to do it in stainless steel) which will be my weekend project.

[David Hodgkins]

To follow up on the previous post, I didn't finish the polishing on Friday. As a matter of fact I took the whole night off from the build and veg'd out in front of the TV. My brother's birthday is in 3 days and I've got to pull out all the stops to get these projects done! But first, I took all of Friday night off. Why did I do that?!?

I did get in some work over the weekend, most of which I have pics for.

I got several deliveries on Friday and Saturday from **********. I received a harness bar (sans shoulder belt clips, which I'll source from Summit), Shoulder belt bezels for the standard cockpit shoulder belt holes, and door pockets. I also received the Voltage gauge back from SpeedHut. In addition to the deliveries I had the outstanding projects of the nose shroud, upper rad shroud and trunk lid cover plate so there was more than enough work to do for the weekend.

First up were the easy items, the gauge and the door pockets. The gauge took all of 2 minutes to install. No biggie. For the door pockets I deviated from the supplied instructions and used industrial strength velcro instead of screwing them into the doors.

The door pockets:


And installed, along with the gauge. Hard to tell, but the tuck and roll matches the seats nicely:


Then I went to work finalizing the template for the nose shroud. I ended up modifying the one I had created previously instead of making a new one. I changed both the front cuts across the openings so they would fit close to the body on one side and lay against the bottom aluminum panel on the rad side. This project will really clean up the front rad opening, and eliminates the big gap in the front:











Unlike the previous fittings the shroud feels really solid in there now. I'll probably attach it with a single rivet on each side, just to be safe. After the shape was finalized I traced it out on a clean sheet of 26 gauge stainless steel, which is getting the full polished stripe/engine turn treatment. It'll be interesting doing the engine turning. since the piece is so "deep" I'll have to re-position it several times in the jig while trying to maintain alignment. It will be interesting to see if I can pull it off.

...continued

[David Hodgkins]

Here are a view pics of the harness bar:





...and here's a pic and link to the clips I'm ordering from Summit:


http://www.summitracing.com/parts/gfr-107w/overview/

I'll be at the shop polishing tonight and will get shots of the new shroud...

[David Hodgkins]

The past two days have been spent polishing, polishing and more polishing. I finished the trunk lid block off plate and the upper radiator shroud but I can't finish the nose shroud until I modify mu engine turning jig.

Here's the difference between unpolished and polished, and then a few shots of the engine turned pieces:

Raw:


Polished:


...and Engine Turned:


Here's what it looks like mocked up. I still need to add a few bends and the SharkHide:




I then covered it up to protect it while I bend it. Here's what it looks like now, along with the truck piece:


Hopefully the panel cover can go in tonight. I'm thinking of applying Por-15 to the back of the fan shroud, or I might powder-coat it.

[Carlos C]

It's too beautiful of a piece to install in on the car. You should hang it in your living room wall as a work of art, and use it as a conversation piece.

Carlos

[David Hodgkins]

It's too beautiful of a piece to install in on the car. You should hang it in your living room wall as a work of art, and use it as a conversation piece.

Carlos

Carlos, that's a nice comment, bro. But wait till you see my next update.

So last night I was headed to the shop, but first I stopped by the hardware store for some nutserts, which I've never worked with before. A comment on Facebook by fellow build buddy Bill Dobbins, AKA 2FAST4U, got me thinking about how I was going to attach this piece. So I picked up several of these things along with some stainless buttonhead screws and lockwashers, as well as some nylon washers. I looked for some 3/4" tubing to use as a break but they didn't have any so since I was short on time (kid pickup and dinner) the plan was to at least bend up the trunk block off plate and work on fitting it. I got lucky though, because I had heard that a shop neighbor had a brake and he was there so I went over and asked him about it. Turns out he has a very nice combo brake, shear and roller setup. I gotta have one of those! I asked him if I could use it and he said sure so I made quick work of the upper rad shroud. Here's what I ended up with:



..and this is what it looked like mocked up:



I had to stop at this point to pick up my daughter from crew practice and get her fed so I didn't get back to the shop until around 7:30.

continued...

[David Hodgkins]

This piece is really turning out nice. I still have to coat it with sharkhide, which will dull the shine a little bit but I was able to bend it on a friend's brake and mock it up last night with 3 of the 5 nutserts hand tightened. Check it out:













Here's what it looks like from inside the nose of the car:



I had to pull the hood off to drill out the nutserts, but getting the shroud on and off in the future should be easy. I'll post some more pics once it's installed.

[MPTech]

That looks great, but just an FYI (maybe you won't have this issue (I hope!)
I made a similar shroud for my mk4 last winter (made up my own pattern) and mounted it similarly with nutserts.
Looked Great before I mounted the body.
Looked even BETTER after I mounted the body.
Even looked GOOD after I mounted the hood.

After I closed the hood, not so good!
Unfortunately, the front part of the hinge that attaches to the hood bracket did not clear my new panel and the weight / leverage left 2 dimples in my brand new panel.
I was crushed.

BE CAREFUL and check your clearance before you close the hood! Hopefully you won't have this issue, but I'd hate to see yours experience what I did.
It's not bad enough to remake, re-sand, re-finish, re-coat, and re-mount mine, but it REALLY bugs me to see those 2 dimples! GRRRRRR

[David Hodgkins]

That looks great, but just an FYI (maybe you won't have this issue (I hope!)
I made a similar shroud for my mk4 last winter (made up my own pattern) and mounted it similarly with nutserts.
Looked Great before I mounted the body.
Looked even BETTER after I mounted the body.
Even looked GOOD after I mounted the hood.

After I closed the hood, not so good!
Unfortunately, the front part of the hinge that attaches to the hood bracket did not clear my new panel and the weight / leverage left 2 dimples in my brand new panel.
I was crushed.

BE CAREFUL and check your clearance before you close the hood! Hopefully you won't have this issue, but I'd hate to see yours experience what I did.
It's not bad enough to remake, re-sand, re-finish, re-coat, and re-mount mine, but it REALLY bugs me to see those 2 dimples! GRRRRRR

I posted just the panel over on FFCars and someone had the same concern. I didn't get a chance to look at it from underneath but I guess we'll find out this afternoon when I re-mount the hood if there is a problem or not.

Here's hoping!

[Carlos C]

David:

I stand corrected on my previous comment. It looks amazing mounted on the car. My concern is that the piece is only attached at one end, leaving the other longer end unsecured, and susceptible to vibration. It also looks like it touches the body at that end. Are you planning to add some rubber bulb seal?

Carlos