Hi All,
This weekend (as with everything else lately) was a struggle. We bolted the entire front end together (save the bumper) and discovered a number of minor alignment issues. The headlight buckets and "eyebrows" posed the greatest problems. Getting the correct relationship between the upper valance, the bottom of the eyebrows, the bottom of the grill, the outside edge of the eyebrows to the fender, the hood to the eyebrows, the top of the grill to the eyebrows was a royal pain in the butt. every correcting adjustment threw another area out of alignment. After a lot of tighten this, loosen that, move this, tweak that, pry here, bend there and hammer & dolly everywhere, we ended up with the alignment we wanted.
After that Wayne went over the body one more time before rolling the car into the booth for final priming. Wayne just needs to finish the passenger side fender and the front valance and we will finally be ready for color. Once we get through these steps and get the car painted, final assembly will fly by.
While Wayne was struggling with the front end panel alignment, I trial fit the dash end panels. One screw holds them in place and they look great. Once we get the windshield pillars painted I will be able to perform the final assembly on the dash. I can't wait for that phase. Once I finish the dash, I can move on to the rest of the interior. Once I have the interior finished, Wayne should have the rest of the front end bodywork complete so we should be able to bolt everything up, turn the key and drive the car over to the alignment shop. That will be a great day. Hopefully it will come soon. :-)
I have included some photos of the intercooler, heat exchanger plumbing. The final assembly of these items will be performed after the installation of the cold air intake system. This may seem backwards, but the 4" diameter cold air intake system mounting flange does not clear the installed heat exchanger plumbing. Maybe I should include this info in the owners manual. Which makes me wonder. When you spend 1/2 mill on a custom car do you get a comprehensive leather bound owners manual or do you get a cardboard box with some of the aftermarket manuals thrown inside. Maybe you just get the keys, a handshake and a "good luck" as you drive off into the sunset.
Catch ya'll l8r