Short one today, I just wanted to see how things were sitting and work out a plan of attack.
So sorry for the bunch of boring photos, this is mainly for my reference so I can work out which areas need work.
I'll make them smaller so it's not such a waste of bandwidth, haha.
Starting on the passenger side..
Scuttle? panel has very little adjustment possible, unless I elongated all the screw holes, but this sits pretty central anyway so I don't think it needs much tbh.
I could probably try and shift it down a little so that the edge of the panel thats under the trim is lined up with the door edge, but it's like this from the factory I think.
Top swage line between the wing and door line up reasonably well. This might move a bit once the crease in wing near the rear is sorted but not by much.
Bolt holes for the wings give a fair bit of adjustment.
Door clearance when opening is tight but ok. Can probably grab some back by shifting the door backwards a little if need be.
Lower swage line lines up reasonably well. These are harder to get in line as I think I didn't quite get the gaps right when welding the two bits together.
but there's a big piece of plastic trim that sits just on top of this which will hide a lot of problems.
Lower wing where it bolts to the sill, etc. This is a little out but there's not much scope for movement here.
Can probably space it down with a washer in behind which will help I think. But then I'm introducing another thing to rust...
Before putting any bolts in to the front of the wing, the nose cone sits here.
You can pull it in to shape a bit and get it to here, easily enough. But I think it could do with possibly a little bit of a bend outwards.
It's pretty messy in that panel gap, the PO tried to glue the two panels together with something like a plastic epoxy?
So that will need a bit of a tidy up as well.
Panel gaps on the bonnet are a bit all over the place, but there's plenty of room for adjustment there.
At the windscreen and then at the radiator.
On to the problem areas.
As far as I can tell, the nose cone is in pretty much the right place, so most of the adjustment will be on the wing side.
I think I'll straighten out the crease in the bumper recess first which should pull it out slightly, and then try and smooth out the worst of the creases and dents in the separator bit and see where it gets me.
The mounting bracket between the wing and nose cone is mildly in the wrong place, but this is reasonably flexible so I'll just bend it a bit so it's easier to bolt on and leave it until the rest looks like it's in the right place.
Same with the mounting bracket for the wing to front valance. I'm pretty sure this panel is also mostly correct, I think there's just some minor tweaking to do with the bracket so it pulls in nicely. The wing in this area looks pretty good.
On to the other side.
It was quite a challenge getting the wing on, and the nose cone lined up. I'm not sure if it's the wing or the cone causing the problem on this side, tbh.
I had to lean on the wing quite heavily to get it this close.
Obviously a lot tighter.
Drivers side is also quite tight at the separator area.
But then not so much at the valance.
Makes me wonder if this wing is maybe pushed inwards a bit.
I just had another thought though. It could possibly be that I haven't pushed the inner guard out far enough when i straightened it, so it's pulling the wing in to the middle too far?
Need to investigate this, as I could probably use a scissor jack or something to push it out a little further perhaps.
Bonnet gaps on this side make it look like the whole thing is just twisted anticlockwise a little. Should be easy enough to fix.
Scuttle panel is about the same as the other side, so nothing to do here.
Top swage is pretty good on this side too.
Door clearance is also tight but acceptable.
Lower swage lines up better on this side.
Sill area needs some work on the sill itself, just to keep it protected. Looks like the old wing got pushed back in to it a bit.
There's a bit of surface rust on the front face of it not shown here.
Right, well done for making it this far, if you have!
All in all, I'm pretty happy with where the panels are sitting, I think it's not going to take a massive amount of tweaking to get them where they need to be.
Obviously things will change a bit once everything beaten in to the right shape.
So with that in mind, I took the nose cone off and got it ready for stripping back. I want to have it bare so I'm aware of any issues it has before I try and move the wings to suit it.
Removed. The clips that hold the grill on gave me a bit of grief until I worked out you weren't meant to remove them via the clips on the back:
You simply unscrew the screws through the front of the grill. -_-
I will probably replace these with a speedclip or something to be honest. The plastic is pretty brittle, and I'm not sure I can get them out of the nose cone without breaking them anyway. And they will need to come out so I can strip back the paint, etc. They're a bit of an odd design. I might see if Toyota has any still on the off chance they do.
Anyway, that out of the way and safely stored. That reminds me. I should probably build that pedestal drill..
There are a few areas that need repair on the nose cone, nothing too crazy. Luckily the red panel is ok in these locations and not too far out of shape so I might be able to get away with cutting and zapping in replacement bits instead of fabrication, yet again.
So I think I will start there, get the nose where it needs to be, and then I will have a better idea of what the wings need.
Oh, and if you were paying attention earlier, as you can see in this earlier pic, the hole in the wing that was full of filler also had a patch just above it.
So that piece of repair is a bit bigger than originally planned.
That's all for now. I might try and get something done tomorrow. I think I'll need a wire brush for my drill for the nose cone but I can't technically go buy one til after 6pm Monday as we are in lockdown, so we'll see what I get up to I guess.
Cheers,
Matt
