Fitting panels and setting gaps.
To do this, you will need:
1x propelling pencil
8x time
151728907012460x patience
I have a propelling pencil.
I have no time. I should be doing work, but I've just spent two days photographing the same thing over and over at the Geneva motor show, and I needed a brain reset.
So far, I have one door, one wing, and both decklids on the car, with gaps aligned as best I'm ever going to get them. Barry set these at 4mm when he was working on the car. With the epoxy primer on, they're now somewhere nearer 3.5mm.
Starting with the door, I used a 3.5mm drill bit as a spacer, gently tightening the hinge bolts till they gripped the hinges but weren't locked down, then tapping the door in and out of the car a million times until the top and bottom edges were a fraction of a millimeter proud of the rear panel.
If this shot was sharp, you'd see a nice, even, 3.5mm gap all around the door.
The bottom overhangs the cill by about a millimeter.
Then I fitted the door catch - same process. I found a nice way of setting the position - get the latch roughly in position, tighten the screws so they're just holding it to the car. Then gently close, position and open the door, then tighten down. Takes minutes as opposed to hours trying to guess, open, adjust, close, guess again, etc.
For fitting the front wing, I used a roll of Arboseal Butyl tape that has been in the garage since I installed some fancy aluminium guttering on the house. I wasn't sure why I was keeping it, but now I know. It was perfect for the job.
It took me four attempts to hang the wing right. In the end, I was happy with the way it looks, although it's not perfect - perhaps 3mm at the front edge, widening to 4mm at the swoosh below the A-pillar. Either way, it's as good as I can do it, and the rear corner lines-up nicely with the A-pillar.
Then the bonnet. This fecker drove me crazy. I called Barry for emotional support. Then I went and read everything there was to read about hood hinges on Pelican. Eventually, I ended-up shimming the rear bolt where the hinge meets the underside of the bonnet - two washers on the passenger side, and one on the driver side. Like most things on this vehicle, I'm not sure that bonnet is original to it, and it has definitely been bashed-about during its 50 years on this earth.
Many hours later, the bonnet was aligned. I might re-visit it later on.
Tomorrow I have a new door pin arriving, which will allow me to hang the driver-side door. Such is the incredibly tight fit, I bent and cracked the original pin trying to remove it from the door hinge when I was getting the car ready for blasting. A new door pin was £15...
