Well hello again,
Another long, overdue update here.
I am still beavering away on the roadster when I can and thought I would take another short time out on the project as it is summer and there are always other things I need/ must attend to.
I will try and keep things a bit more brief, this time too.
So after making the fiberglass parts I did fit up on the spare tyre well and then with some help dropped the body back on to try and get more serious about cutting and fitting things up.
As I said before I knew I needed to make some modifications around the cockpit area so it was time to get at it.
Again I am not really sure of the origins of this body my best guess is it is a Johnex, and that mould was made from an Aurora body ( modified) and the Aurora body mould was created from a mould off an early original 260 car….or so the story goes.
It’s all a bit complicated and I have not had the chance to examine either version to be sure but there are a few telltale signs I can discern from photos. Whatever the case, this is the body I have and it will work, with a bit of help.
So taking a cue from the drawing notes I created and added the door hinge mounts and straightened things out from there.
A new cowl tube was formed and the cowl area cut to clear the tube. I will reform the fiberglass in this area to match the tube for a more pleasing / correct shape than the body had before.
I then cut the rear area and tried moving it forward to more match the dimensions given in the drawings. In the end I think I will do the same as the front and form the new “glass” over the tube, but that’s a bit later. For now the cut piece was needed to help understand where the door opening needed to be.
So it I needed to start connecting the points together. The upper corners are quite tight and I did try to bend these without help but I knew that the thin wall ¾ tube would not allow that small a radius empty. So first I tried some sand but still no luck, I just can’t pack it tight enough so I needed some Cerrobend or “woods metal” something I learned abut way back when I was an apprentice. I finally located some from an alloy supply outfit on the west coast, too bad about the distance because it’s heavy stuff to ship but it really makes all the difference for this kind of thing.
The tube on the left is the sand filled one and the one on the right is the cerrobend filled one otherwise the exact same bender was used.
Really quite amazing stuff……
I fit up the windshield to its brackets ( no holes drilled yet ) and did a mock up of the soft top and offered up the side curtains I have to better determined what I needed to do about the door openings.
I am not 100 percent on the windshield rake right now but I do know what the door opening should be as taken from an original car and when I apply that figure to mine the side curtain lines up nicely so it was time to cut.
I just needed to ease things forward and wanted to keep the shape so a nice long cut and a series of relief cuts allowed me to move the rear edge forward a bit and keep a nice gentle curve.
Then I filled in the resulting gaps with some new fiberglass and rechecked things, it’s a bit crude at the moment but once things are properly framed I can grind out most of this and lay in some better glass work.
So being happy with the result for now I smoothed things out a bit, removed and boxed up the windscreen and top parts and decided it was time to figure out the doors.
OH BOY!
Stay tuned my friends.
Hudson
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