{"id":1572,"date":"2011-08-31T08:19:37","date_gmt":"2011-08-31T12:19:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.monocoque-metalworks.com\/main\/?p=1572"},"modified":"2011-08-31T08:19:37","modified_gmt":"2011-08-31T12:19:37","slug":"house-call","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monocoque-metalworks.com\/main\/2011\/08\/house-call\/","title":{"rendered":"House Call!"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a cautionary tale about choosing your body shop wisely…\u00a0 In the Spring, I sold a Series 2 center section to a customer and did some reshaping on the power bulge, etc. so that there would be minimal work at the body shop.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, whenever the body shop ran into a high spot (and the high spots on this panel were very minimal and shallow – like thousandths of an inch – I would have just laid in a little more slick sand and covered the issues in the block sanding…) – but anyway, when this shop hit a high spot while sanding the filler, they just smacked it down with a pick hammer, smeared in more filler, and went on their way.\u00a0 This is VERY common – your run of the mill body shop has NO CONCERN whatsoever for the underside of the panel – and that’s no good on an E-Type bonnet!<\/p>\n

So, earlier this Summer, I stopped at the customer’s house and spent a couple of days re-re-shaping the center section, and smoothing out as much of the pick damage as I could with the planishing hammer.<\/p>\n

In addition, we worked on another major issue with the top of the bulkhead in front of the windshield.\u00a0 If you remember from my earlier post this year, this car is a ’69 roadster that was dropped from the slings coming off the ship in ’69, and landed on the dock upside down – AAGGGHHH!\u00a0 The car was then shipped to a Jag dealer in Arizona, and they simply bent the windshield pillars back up, and pounded everything out with a BIG hammer and then loaded it up with filler…<\/p>\n

The current owner replaced the entire bonnet, and the rear wings were smoothed and filled,\u00a0 The cowl, however, was mashed in substantially, and although he had asked for it to be repaired as well, the new body ship filled that with filler too – LOTS of it.\u00a0 I took up an old panel I picked up from another Jag shop years ago, and we made the best of it with the tools at his home – including a flux-core MIG.<\/p>\n