{"id":3039,"date":"2012-04-28T10:26:30","date_gmt":"2012-04-28T14:26:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.monocoque-metalworks.com\/main\/?p=3039"},"modified":"2015-02-18T13:16:25","modified_gmt":"2015-02-18T18:16:25","slug":"an-excellent-pair-of-series-1-wings-made-perfect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monocoque-metalworks.com\/main\/2012\/04\/an-excellent-pair-of-series-1-wings-made-perfect\/","title":{"rendered":"An excellent pair of Series 1 wings \u2013 made perfect"},"content":{"rendered":"

Late last year, a customer brought in a bonnet to be restored for his ’66 coupe, and when he started unloading it, the pieces looked like they were brand new!\u00a0 All pieces had been plastic media blasted, and then sprayed in epoxy primer.<\/p>\n

There were some minor crash issues, and he had started to attempt to smooth these areas, but decided he’d better let the pros handle it because he wanted this bonnet to be PERFECT in bare metal – which is why he took the time and trouble to drive it up here from Louisiana.<\/p>\n

That’s a pretty tall order…\u00a0 The wrecked bonnets that we reshape are not DEAD SMOOTH like they look in the grey primer in the photos.\u00a0 Don’t get me wrong – they are DAMN CLOSE, and I usually tell customers, “If you lay a wing on the floor in the grey etch-primer, and stand right over it, it will look factory perfect.\u00a0 But if you close your eyes and run your hands over it, you will feel minor surface imperfections that will need to be filled – usually a good block-sanded coat of high-build primer will do the trick.”\u00a0 Many customers can’t feel it at all – I guess I have highly trained hands….<\/p>\n

Our metalwork is usually within thousandths of an inch – often single digits.\u00a0 I don’t usually go nuts getting the surface “perfect” on the big wrecks (like the crushed V-12 bonnet from January), because they are going to need some minimal filler to smooth things out anyway…<\/p>\n

This bonnet, though, was close – it was like I heard this little voice saying, “OK – those other bonnets could never be perfect again in bare metal and you got them as close as anyone could, but this one CAN BE – are you man enough?…”\u00a0 And I knew that is what the customer was looking for too, so I dove right in! – NOT – It sat upstairs for several months while I worked up the nerve!<\/p>\n

Finally, it was time to pull her down and have a go at it.\u00a0 Another reason I was hesitant to start on this one was the black epoxy primer.\u00a0 That stuff is HARD to get back off, and in my opinion really should not go onto the car until well into the bodywork stage.\u00a0 It’s great stuff, but having it on around here while we are trying to do metalwork is just a pain.\u00a0 I really wasn’t sure how I was going to work around it – but that problem soon worked itself out too…<\/p>\n

Here is a look at the restoration of the wings.\u00a0 In their black primer up in the “attic\/parts department”, they looked BRAND NEW, and a half-dozen people must have said, “Are those new fenders” in the past few months…\u00a0 The lower valance and center section do have issues that were much more obvious, and we will cover those in a later post…<\/p>\n