Hood mounting

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Major System Category: Body (Hood)
Task: Mount the hood
Parts: Corvette donor hinges
Prerequisite Tasks: Everything under the hood.
Additional Costs:
Time Requirement: 4 to 5 hours
Date Started: September 26, 2012
Date Completed: September 29, 2012
The task of mounting the hood and attaching the hinges is quite important. Get the hood messed up and the entire car is going to look cockeyed. This certainly requires more thought than just installing the bulb seal, flopping the hood over that and bolting the hinges tot he car. Alignment is very important. Now this isn't to say that if the hinges don't go on just right all is lost. The hood hinges mirror the hatch hinges in that they have some alignment capability.

This is where the hood mates to the body shell on the driver's side next to the  door hinge. The idea here is for the  ends to match up. I found that when i was off by 1/2 inch, this section had slid on me. Once the hinge  is bolted to the hood, this can still be adjusted by moving the hinge assembly where it attaches tot he chassis.

At this point in the build, I am nor ready to seal off the top of the tunnel and run the duct work through holes cut in the top panel. For now the top tunnel aluminum remains uninstalled. However, I did screw the piece that comes attached to the front of the body shell and ran bulb seal over that.

The laser level is an invaluable tool. This is a low light photo, because the garage door is shut and the lights are off.  The horizontal line bisects the headlight pods. This is an easy place to conduct measurements. One thing I discovered is that there no flat spots on the hood. It is a constant curve.

For my initial alignment, I positioned the hood so it runs flush along the body shell where the hood and body meet by the door hinges. I used Gorilla Tape to secure this area. This isn't perfect and things did shift around on me. I set up the laser level and ran the horizontal line so it bisected the headlight pods on both sides. Then I took my yard stick and set it in the pods. Initially, I was half an inch off side to side. The best way to describe the alignment process is to play with the hood until these measurements get within an acceptable tolerance. For me that is somewhere under 1/8 inch difference.

Passenger side light pod.

Driver's side light pod.

I snapped a line under the hood louvers and ran a measurement from the edge of the hood to the louver opening. In this case, everything was dead on. The alignment issues came from one side of the hood being slightly forward of the other side. The laser level is enormously helpful in getting this right. The other thing I did was drop the front end off the jacks so it rested on the suspension and the tires. This helped to eliminate a good chunk of the differences. The rest could be a slight difference in the way I have the shocks set on either side of the car. I am guessing that if I ran the same alignment procedure on my Corvette, I would see similar variations left to right.

The one flat piece I found was inside the front grill. I used a level to see how close I was. She is still a tad high on the driver's side, but well inside my 1/8 inch tolerance.

These are the 5/16 bolts connecting the hinge assembly to the  hood.

Moment of truth. The hood actually opened up. Right now I have a plastic tube holding it up.

I performed a preliminary attachment for the hood. Brought the car back down to the ground and ran the laser measurements over again. I did this a number of times. This is what takes time on this process. I am sure people with more experience can get through this part faster than me.

Initial Measurements and Mounting

<< Cockpit/Tunnel Aluminum (Rear)                 Rear Hatch Fitment >>
<< Emergency Brake and Cable                                   Hood Hinge >>
                                                                                    Door Panels >>
                                                                                    Roof Scoop >>

Major System Category: Body (Shell)
Task: Mount body shell and do initial measurements
Parts: Two other people
Prerequisite Tasks:
Additional Costs:
Time Requirement: 1 hour
Date Started: August 29, 2012
Date Completed: August 29, 2012
I dropped the body on the chassis last night. This comes under the category of, "She's really starting to look like a car." I always had this idea that I might get to a point where I had outstripped my spending schedule (in this case the ISIS Power system) versus my build schedule. Two things have occurred:

1. I am 60 days from the ISIS order (due to budget/funds constraints)
2. I ordered the Aluminum Fuel tanks, sender and fuel pump system from Quick Racing Products. This is because I have no confidence in the fuel modification procedure outlined in the manual. Not that I can't do the modification, rather I think it will leak no matter what I do or try. (We are talking about 93 Octane gas next to a 500+ HP engine and very hot headers. Yeah, fuel leak, intense heat, enclosed space - great idea!)

Body shell installed on the chassis. I had to lower the car onto the front suspension in order to clear the inline jack .

So I have reverted to the body work. To do this right, requires time and patience. Through out the body work portion of the blog, I am going to reference the relevant YouTube videos produced by a builder with the handle Fastthings. This guy has a spectacular grasp of what needs to be done, and these videos are a step by step tutorial for the GTM body work.

To maneuver the body, I needed some help. I recruited two guys from across the street. Most people are eager to help, because they are super curious about the project.

The door hinges proved a bit challenging. I think it depends on which side gets  fitted first. Like so many other things on this car, nothing gets done fast or easy. Orientation: Driver's side door opening.

After the body is more or less on the chassis, it will take a little grunt work to get fitted around the chassis. The hardest part was working around the door hinges. It is pretty tight between the door hinges and striker plate. I found I could leverage things lifting the body shell from the rear wheel well.

I had to pull the shell over the bottom members of the chassis. Orientation: Bottom of the chassis under the rear of the driver's side door.

The other places the body shell seems to hang up on are the main cross members that run laterally on the bottom of the chassis. I just needed to pull the shell away from the chassis and lever it down around these point. I had to do this when I took the shell off two months ago.

This is the splash panel that must be installed prior to installing the rear suspension. I have been bothered by this panel , because I figured it had to bend for the body shell. It remains upright. The body shell rests on the roll cage and the frame for the transaxle. Orientation: Inside the engine bay looking up towards the body.

I broke out the cross line laser level, tape measure, blue painter's tape and a Sharpie. One of the things Fastthings talks about is finding the center line, and measuring different points to figure out where the symmetry issues exist. 

The flash washed out the photo. This was taken in a low light situation. I ran blue tape at different points so I could identify the center line incrementally along the body. The cross line enables a horizontal and vertical lines to be projected so measurements can be made from similar points on the body and frame.

The laser level works best in low light. Just like laser sights for firearms are fundamentally useless in bright sun light, the same applies to the laser level. The idea here is to identify points on the car that can be used to measure symmetry, and to identify the center line. Things will not line up exactly, but the chassis and body are pretty close. I found that everything was lining up within 1/8 of an inch.

Another shot o f the car marked with horizontal tape lines.

I also raised the car and fired off the laser underneath. This let me find the center points along the bottom of the chassis and to shoot the laser upwards into the empty engine bay. This is fairly useful, since the first item I am going to tackle is the hatch fitment.

I set this level on the center line in front of the wind shield opening. The front of the car is resting on the suspension and the body shell came up level.