When I picked up my kit, Richard showed me a good method of bending metal with no need for a former. Sadly, I ignored his advice on the first end and tried to use the same technique I had used on the rear panel but somehow it didn't work and I ended up with a small kink in the panel - doh! I used his method on the other end and it worked much better.
Its a difficult piece to do though - I decided the best way was to use the small strip that the dashboard will eventually fix on to as a former. This strip is fixed in shape and is what the scuttle has to fix to, so seemed sensible. I bent the scuttle panel as close as I could to the shape of this strip:
The central tab has a notch that matches up with one on the scuttle to show the central point, which saves a lot of tricky measuring. I drilled a hole in this tab, put a cleco in and then continued along the rest of the strip, putting a cleco in every other tab (I don't want too many rivets):
Some gentle hammering removed the kink I had put in earlier and then I rested it in place:
I stopped at this point because I'm not quite sure on the next step - it doesn't seem to be big enough at the firewall end to go all the way round? Need to check other people's blogs...
Earlier, I'd tightened the bolts on the propshaft and drilled holes for the battery panel and the pedal box although neither of these are going in permanently yet.
No comments:
Post a Comment