Canuck 289 scratch build

[old willy]

Ok then, still trying to get caught up here so here goes.

Silly me, spending time working on the project rather than tell my friends about it......

Now that I had the door openings established I needed to get some doors, my body came with a pair but I only wanted the outer skins so I stared cutting.




WOW, Ok I was not prepared for what was inside, I knew there was some metal involved but I was not expecting a gallon of Bondo, just gluing everything together!

What the heck is that all about? Is this normal?
I mean it’s not even short stand fiberglass filler it’s just regular Bondo and lots of it, some thin wall ¾ square tubing tacked together and gobs of filler, no wonder they were so heavy……

I wonder how much is inside the boot lid…..

Well I just want the skins so sadly? just toss the rest but honestly that’s some fairly crappy work hiding in there, wow, just, wow……

So I went ahead with fitting up the rest of the tubes around the door openings thus tying all the cockpit tubes together at last.



The up side of making the opening a bit shorter is I can now trim the skins to fit and fix the rather large panel gap that it had before.
And with that held in place I can step back and see the shape from the cowl tube, along the door and to the rear tube, looks OK so far.



Now I needed to “frame” the doors, so with much fussing and fitting the inner and outer shapes were created.



These have been the most challenging tubes to form so far. And I did need to do them in sections and splice the tubes back together again. Also fitting them to the existing body rather than what AC cars did way back when and fit the body to the framework……



I thought about a few different ways to do it but in the end I have decided to bond the skin to the frame with some modern 3M auto body panel adhesive and have created a steel flange around the door frame for that purpose as I have seen others do.
It also allows me to hold things in place for fitting with those handy old Clecos again. I will do the same for the bonnet and the boot frames.



So then onto hinges, I started by making the pieces straight off the drawings to see where that got me, fingers crossed……





I made up the latch mounts and added them as well.



Then the moment of truth…………



Well it opens….but not really enough

Unfortunate yes, but not entirely unexpected.

My best guess is it has to do with the thickness of the fiberglass body vs. the aluminum one and some variations in the frame work.

So after some trial and error with cardboard cut-out pieces I determined that the hinge point on the chassis needed to be more forward and more outboard. It’s amazing how much difference some 1/8ths of an inch can make.

I also needed to rework the front of the right hand door a bit to help with the opening, again those fractions of inches make all the difference sometimes.




The orange stuff is just some corrugated plastic board, it makes a really nice door gap spacing.

I also added some spacers under the door hinge and latch for fit up.




I had been watching a video of a guy doing the top and interior work on an AC Ace and when he went to add the leather door pockets it changed the spacing on the door hinge causing the door to protrude slightly from the body
This is easy enough to correct at the latch by shimming the striker but there is no way to adjust the hinge inwards other than bending it. He compromised by skiving the leather as thin as he could to minimize the issue but knowing this ahead of time I am trying to allow for it somewhat.
Not the kind of thing you want to deal with after final body work and paint….like he did…..

So there, working doors! Very happy with that, much, much to much fussing around but in the end so nice to have done.

So now that I have doors I want to use them…….

Till next time,
Hudson





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