Scuttle on

Because I am waiting on some panels for the rear I figured I would knock out the scuttle. If you search back several posts to where I cut the scuttle off you might get an idea of why I pushed this off for so long…. Either way I had to take the dive at some point.

Before the scuttle could be welded on I needed to fix the bulkhead/dash rail lip. This ended up needing more work than expected. In hindsight I probably could have save a bunch of time doing the hole dash rail, but wheres the fun in that?

So first here is what we were working with, not too shabby with some primer on it.

Trying to think of the safest/ easiest way to proceed with this I decided it might make more sense to have the scuttle trimmed and aligned before moving forward messing with the lip. So after searching for a long time in the garage I found my bonnet hinges, got the scuttle trimmed up and clamped and I figured now would be a good time to use the bonnet to check gaps etc. This was made a bit easier due to having quick release hinges another bonus is the bonnet was lined up pretty well before the strip down and that part of the hinge remains untouched.

With everything looking pretty decent it was time to start tackling the dash lip. This was tedious and I felt like I was welding a quilt of metal. Lots of patch work here, I didn’t get pictures of it all, I did mark the good and bad sections. Lets just say I pretty much redid almost all of it after getting the first couple patches done. During the patching process I had the scuttle and bonnet on and off more times than I can count to ensure the window opening was correct and the lip had the correct angle.

So now the scuttle can go on right? wrong… I still needed to patch the remainder of the inner wing. I waffled on closing up the fresh air vents. Originally I was going to, I decided not too as that is a permanent move and what if I don’t like not having them? So I will make block off plates at some point for them. The top of the inner wing is an interesting panel, I had plenty of pictures of what it looked like before and honestly I don’t think it matters as long as it adds stiffness to the inner wing. So I made some repairs and got it all welded in. One thing to note I am not a fan of how the scuttle/closers/innerwing/flitch all meet up. Theres a big ol gap into the cabin and as far as I can tell this is how its designed. I will probably gob this hole up with seam sealer before it gets painted.

So now that the inner wings were done it was time to weld the scuttle on. Not pictured is the top of the inner wings painted, you can see in the pictures above my sharpie line for the spot that I couldn’t paint due to the fact I would be welding there. After lots of tweaking clamping and then just taking a plunge the scuttle was welded on. I am actually pretty happy with how the welds were ground back as well, I recently got some new flap discs and tried a different amazon brand and these things are awesome.

Finally got the scuttle closers welded on, not that I got a good picture of them, they are there though I promise lol. One more test fit of the bonnet and that is a job done.

Next up I guess I will be staying on the front seeing I don’t know when the panels will be here for the rear. I am getting really close though the check list is super short now. Who knows maybe the next update I will have the front end fitted.