Fitting and Aligning Headlight Buckets

Fitting and aligning headlight buckets.  Sounds simple.  Sounds innocent.  Yeah, right...
First you start off with what appears to be a perfectly fine 1963 Corvette front end.

Then you look real hard for any kind of stress fractures that might later show up in the paint job.  You grind back a little paint and you grind back a little fiberglass then you sandwich the area with fresh fiberglass to make it real strong.

Then you keep looking real hard until everything looks suspect then you grind it all back and re-fiberglass everything.

After the fiberglass sets up you clean everything up by grinding and feathering some more.

Headlight bucket inner plate reinforcements are next.  These bolt to the header bar that run left to right just behind the headlights.  After these are bolted in and the support rods are installed its time to apply bonding adhesive.

As we did for the hood, I used a set of dumbbells to match the height of the body and the buckets.  Bonding adhesive was then applied between the body and the header bar and allowed to cure.

I used a bent length of flat bar to get the proper contour as shown.

20 hours later it looks pretty good.  All it needs now is a little primer to pretty it up.

Then you do the exact same thing to the other side.  I am not sure I am done but they're much better.

What the ???  Is that Wilson?

Naw...  It's Ty.  He's working on the interface between the bumper and body.  This too will require grinding, fiberglass and feathering.  More on this in a later edition.

As always, thanks for watching.

Hood Alignment

Ty and I aligned the hood until we had a nice gap along both fenders and the front of the car.  Shims were installed as necessary then all 10 hinge bolts were torqued down tight.

When we rebuilt the front end a year ago the body was off the chassis.  Now that the body is on the chassis, the headlight brackets are installed and the hood is aligned, we can see there are issues. 

The front corners of the hood and the front center of the hood are properly shimmed with the body but the nose sags in between those areas.  Ty and I agreed the mismatch in height was unacceptable and we also agreed the cure would not be Bondo.

It sags between each of the headlight buckets.

We decided to remove the front end support structure in its entirety and start over.  This took hours of work and it was not for the squeamish.

If you double click on this picture you'll see hammers, chisels, a sledge hammer, an air chisel and a variety of other tools of persuasion.  More importantly, the nose support and the headlight bucket supports have been removed.

After grinding away the old bonding adhesive from all the supports and the underbody we started reassembly.  Because bonding adhesive sets up so quickly it was decided to bond the nose support in sections starting with the center.  In this picture the clamps hold the the nose support in position while the center section is being bonded.  The dumbbell is holding the center section flush with the hood.

Bonding adhesive is a catalyst compound that basically glues fiberglass pieces together.  Unlike Bondo, it can not be used as a filler.  Because the hood support is now bonded at the center, access to the rest of the support is limited.  In cases like this I've found that disposable cake decorating bags work great as an applicator.  In this picture the bonding adhesive is mixed, loaded in the bag and ready to be piped into place.  All I have to do is snip the bag and squeeze.  I get about 10 minutes working time before the adhesive starts to set up.  

Once again I use dumbbells to maintain alignment with the hood.  They work great.

I think the results are exceptional.  Compare this picture with the first and judge for yourself.

If you haven't guessed, headlight buckets are next.

Thanks for watching.

Rivet Nuts

Shop time remains limited and will stay that way until October or November.  For those of you that insist I post something every couple weeks or so I offer this nugget of information about a pretty cool tool.

Have you ever tried to tighten a molding, sill plate, chrome trim piece or something similar only to find that the hole for the screw had stripped out?  Options were to either use a bigger screw, goop up the existing hole with something and hope the screw holds, or just push the screw into the hole and hope it stayed there.  Now there's another option and it's called a rivet nut.  Below is a Rivet Nut kit that I bought at Tacoma Screw.  There are other manufactures as well.

It's a pretty simple process.  The stripped hole is drilled out to a size that accommodates the rivet nut you want to use.

5 different sizes came in my kit.  This rivet nut is steel but other materials are also available.

The rivet nut is screwed onto the tool then inserted into the drilled hole.  The tool is squeezed until the backside of the rivet nut mushrooms.  Unlike a pop rivet gun, nothing pops or breaks though. 

The rivet nut ends up flush on the outside...

and it mushrooms on the backside.  Here is an example of one I used on a flat washer. 

This thing works so well I decided to use rivet nuts for the whole upper door molding on the drivers side door.

10 minutes later I had the molding installed and it's very secure.  I'll do the other side as well.

I am sure I'll be using rivet nuts at several locations, especially when we start the interior trim pieces.

As always, thanks for watching.

Drivers Side Door Alignment - 1963 Corvette

As was the case for the passenger door, the drivers side upper hinge had to be ground and the lower hinge had to be shimmed.  Once we were satisfied with the alignment all 20 hinge bolts were torqued down. 

Now it's time to work on the door to body fitment.  Instead of using Bondo my preference is to build up low areas using fiberglass.  I removed the primer from all the areas that were either mismatched or too low.  Duct tape was placed to channel excess fiberglass resin away from the rest of the car.  

Duct tape works great because fiberglass resin won't stick to it. 

Door gaps were stuffed with strips of foam rubber to prevent resin from going inside the door jamb. 

Fiberglass was then applied and allowed to cure.

Some areas actually bridged the door gap.

The duct tape was removed after the fiberglass cured.

The fiberglass was cut at all the door gaps using our Fein Multimaster tool.  Door gaps were then sanded open to the proper width using a small piece of sheet metal wrapped with sandpaper.

The 2 inch square fiberglass patch in this picture was done over a year ago when we reinstalled the B-pillar.  I ground this area paper thin then used it as a form for the fiberglass we applied today.  Remember, the fiberglass we use is clear which means the patch you see is on the backside.

With today's effort we will only have to use a small amount of Bondo when we prep for paint. 

That's it!  Both doors are done.