Front Near-side wing

Gosh, it is cold today but having wrapped up warm I ventured into the garage. Of the many headaches I have encountered, the biggest one has been to do with panel gaps. Or to be more precise, getting them right.

The problem is self-created because, as stated previously, I have removed too many panels at once and veered very much away from the "one panel at a time" rule. You live and learn.

Anyway, I decided that the first gap to get right is the rear edge of the door to B-pillar, because the rear wing is the only fixed and original reference point I have. After much shimming and unshimming, I got it about right although it is not perfect and is actually a little smaller than I wanted (I was aiming for the "get a pencil in the gap" perfection).

Not looking too bad. Ignore the dirty rusty rear wing, it is coming off (in about 2015).

Next step was to get the front edge of the door lined up with the rear edge of the front wing. This was (and still is) a nightmare because in order to do this the whole wing had to fit elsewhere and in so many places. Adjustments made "here" caused problems "there", with the new inner wheel arch, bonnet, front panel and lower "chin" panel all having their say. At this point I quite inexplicably found myself singing (outloud) "It's so funny, how we don't fit anymore" to the tune of Cliff Richard's "It's so funny, how we don't talk anymore". Odd, because I hated the original.

The gap is too big at the bottom and wing still sits a little low at the top.

I am not sure if I mentioned this before, but even though the new front wing is an original BL part, the gutters were welded in wrong. This is very common apparently and if left unchecked would result in a huge gap between the bonnet and wing. Thankfully drilling out the spotwelds was easy and removing the gutters gives a much better overall fit. I will weld them back on later.

The root causes (apart from me) of much of the mis-fitting are the flange at the bottom rear of the front wing, where it covers the sill and the overall awful quality of the remanufactured inner wheel arch. However, with a lot of snipping, bending and hammer work I can see that it will all come together.

All in  all I am a bit happier today as I can see that the job of getting everything lined up is actually not impossible, as I first thought. It is just nearly impossible, which is a much more satisfying state of affairs.

Looks ok from this distance and height!

And finally, a couple of photos which don't relate to the post that much but I thought  I would include them anyway. The batteries in my camera where running out, you see, so I just took some shots of anything.

Sing along:
"it's so funny,...."