Tag Archives: bonnet

Body work

May 2003 – Bonnet, part 4

Bonnet mouth Bondo

We unbolted the top section and the lower section of bonnet in order to finish some last bits of welding of a tab and to bang forward the upper and lower “lips” of the mouth. These sections had been reinforced or completely replaced with fresh metal, and so the stuff was difficult to shape. The lower section of the bonnet was especially resistant to further pushing, though it went forward about a quarter of an inch in the center. The movement of the upper section was a little less, though this was less critical, since the upper section of the bonnet mouth needed less adjustment. Basically, when we flattened the portion of the center section above and behind the mouth, the effect was more or less achieved.

It was time to give up on further hammering and resort to, well, plastic resin.

I was not entirely happy that we got to this point. You always hope that the metalwork will get done and that the body filling part of the job will require about a teaspoon of Bondo, preferably less. It rarely actually ends up that way, and I doubt it ever ends up that way with a job the size of the one that we were doing on this old bonnet. The fact is that I was less and less assured that shaping the sheet metal of the bonnet would mean progress. We had come to the point when an adjustment here meant a whack to correct the adjustment itself. We were shaping ourselves into a mess, and the shape in any case was pretty much there.

Now, I have three rules for using body filler:

  1. Use it only when nothing else will do.
  2. Use it to smooth, not to shape.
  3. If you shape, consider buying a new part.

We had reached the point of rule number one. I feared (rightly) that rule number two was going to be transgressed. And so, rule number three kicked into effect. The part in question was the lower bonnet section, also known as the “bonnet valance.” Clearly, the metalwork that I had done was not in the right place. The lower “lip” section still was recessedand would require more than a smattering of body filler to bring it out to the point it needed to be. I estimated that we’d need to apply about a quarter inch of Bondo to about a five-inch stretch of the lower lip, roughly from the center toward the right side.

In effect, I would be using Bondo to shape, not just to smooth (and I wasn’t very happy about that). The prospect of getting the upper section of the bonnet smooth and flat was daunting enough. To tell the truth, I hate working on flat areas, since they betray the most delicate of waves and ripples. The E-type bonnet is largely a smooth flat area. To add to the difficulty, that flatness has a delicate curve, here and there, so you can’t just take a straightedge and drag it across the surface to determine “truth.” You have to find other ways of determining the curve and the flatness.

For Aaron and I at this point, the human hand is the best instrument we have to discover the ripples and unwanted curves.

The bonnet we were working on had at one time been turned into a single piece with welds along the intersections of the wings, the center section, and the lower section. Although the chrome “bead” was still intact along the top, the meeting of wing and center section below the headlights had been obscured by body filler. (I believe that some E-types were built without a bead there, though I think that feature was introduced well after 1963. It may have been something seen in the so-called “Series 1 1/2.”) When we disassembled the bonnet, we cut these hideous welds and removed the Bondo. It’s a bit unfortunate that we have to replace the lower chrome “bead” below the lights.

In order to make sure that the body filler would not seal the bonnet sections together, we inserted thin cardboard strips between them. This barrier keeps the body filler from spilling over the seam, and it will make it easier to disassemble the bonnet again. At present, there is about a centimeter of cardboard jutting out at the seams. Once we have smoothed the seams with Bondo on both sides of the seams, my plan is to literally grind down the cardboard with a sander, and then sand the Bondo across the seam. The cardboard should separate nicely, and the seam between the sections will be very consistent.

We still have a fair amount to do before we can do that final sanding, though. Small ripples in the center section of the bonnet are now smoothed, but we do have a few wide (and very slight) depressions between metal “humps.” We dealt with a few of these things already, and the trick was determining whether the exposed metal is in fact too high or if the Bondo lapping up against it is too low. It’s a trick. I think the best way of doing this smoothing is to move from the back portions toward the front, not from one side to another.

After we get the bonnet smoothed, we’ll run a straightedge along lines and see if we notice irregular sections. I think that will about do it until we can actually use tube lights against a glossy primer surface. Lights are always the giveaway.

One thing about this body filling: you really see the shape of the car forming before you — gratifying sight, indeed.

Body work

May 2003 – Bonnet, part 3

Bonnet Metal Reassembled

The goal for the week and the weekend was to get the metalwork on the bonnet to the point where we could put the external sections together. We needed to get to that point in order to move toward the more detailed banging and pushing. We have indeed come a long way from the beginning, where Bondo was thick and sheet metal was visible. But we have not achieved what’s needed. The metal itself is now sound, though we do have a few gaps to repair. The severe corrosion on the nose has been removed and reinforced, either by cutting out the offending section and replacing it with new metal (as on the left wing and the lower “lip” of the mouth) or by removing rust and reinforcing with an inside plate of metal (as with the upper “lip” of the mouth and a few small sections on the lower part of the bonnet assembly).

The various sections of the bonnet’s external sections are fitted together with tabs that are attached with bolts and special “oval washers.” These tabs we completely replaced on the foremost sections, and we are reinforcing the tabs running from the front to the back of the bonnet, at the junction of the two wings and the center section. Replacement of the tabs on the front was tedious, since it involved welding tabs to the section itself and then shaping a flat piece of sheet metal to fit over the tabs. We probably overdid it a little, since the tabs are now two thicknesses of metal in part. Also, we made the tabs almost twice their original width — I wanted to make sure that we had sufficient metal to drill and manipulate for the attachments.

The nose itself is almost correct. The areas at the center do not quite make the grade, and there will still have to be some gross shaping before we can resort to the final tapping and eventual body filling. It’s funny, but you really need to have the external sections together to see even the gross imperfections, since the pieces visually act as a whole. When the lower bonnet section was apart from the rest of the bonnet’s pieces, I could tell something was not right, but after fitting that section to the rest it became very apparent what needed to be pulled and pounded.

The mouth of the bonnet is extremely difficult to “get right” — probably because it is such a focal point for the body. It is extremely easy to get wrong. The pictures here show that the mouth is a little curled back still. I estimate that some sections need to go forward another centimeter or so.

The timekeepers among visitors to this web page might be interested to hear that my original estimate of 60 hours for metalwork on the bonnet looks a bit too conservative, even though I thought that it was a bit rich when I originally sketched out the estimate. A lot of that underestimation comes from the “getting right” of the bonnet mouth. That seems an elusive goal, especially since the shaping of the metal is much more easily done when everything is apart and (unfortunately) the assessment of the shape is best done when everything is together.

Body work

April 2003 – Bonnet, part 2

Bonnet lower section

I took a closer look at the bonnet’s lower section, which makes up the lower half of the “mouth.” This section is the attachment point for the whole bonnet as well as the section where the electrical system connects to the bonnet. The hinge attachments had some stress damage and rust that needed attention, and we needed to repair the entire set of tabs that connect the lower section to the two wing sections and the upper center section. Also the mouth section itself had received the same treatment as the upper half — welded tabs, curled, and smeared with Bondo. Lots of Bondo. It seems I grossly overestimate the amount of such work that we can accomplish in a full weekend, since I was thinking these repairs would be a day or so. And then we’d go forth and assemble the bonnet in its rough form just to take a look. But it took the whole weekend to get the metalwork done on the lower section.

The mouth repair took most of Saturday, and Sunday was mainly getting the rest in shape. I want to do a few more strengthening fixes and get the final details on the tabs done before we move back to the rest of the bonnet, but these items should take about a day. Who knows, I might do some work in the evenings this week just to get the lower section ready. The remainder of the metalwork on the bonnet is tab repair and work on the center section, especially the upper mouth area. Since that mouth work is putzy, I’m thinking it will probably take an entire weekend to do, maybe more. I figure that the metalwork on the bonnet alone will take about 60 hours of work, all told. Then we’ll have to do the detail finishing up with a smattering of Bondo over the remaining ripples.

That’s Aaron doing the welding on the tabs in the picture, by the way.

Once again, as I was finishing up the lower mouth metalwork, I was thinking about trying out lead loading. I thought better of it, though. I can do pretty fine work with Bondo, and I think learning a new medium is something I don’t want to attempt on the most visible section of this car.

Body work

March 2003 – Bonnet, part 1

That Incredible Bonnet

As one of the books I’ve read puts it, “The E-type’s remarkable bonnet, stylistically and by volume, formed fully one-third of the whole car and was the most beautifully sculpted aspect of the overall design” (Nigel Thorley, Jaguar E-Type: A Celebration of the World’s Favorite ’60s Icon. Sparkford, UK: Haynes Publishing, 2001, p. 14). For me and I suppose for a great number of people, the Jaguar E-Type is defined by the bonnet. The cat eyes of the faired-in headlights and the open mouth at the front make the E-Type. So it was gratifying — and a little daunting — to begin working on our Jag’s bonnet.

I have to admit that I didn’t know what to expect when we finally stripped it and began to work on it. When I first looked at the car in the rain at the side of a Virginia corn field, I wondered if indeed the bonnet was already too far gone to be repaired. It looked a mess, with the nose all punched in and the artless, careless bandaid treatment with HVAC sheet metal riveted and Bondo-pasted to the front. Aside from the punched in nose, there were a few places of rust at the rear portion of the wings. But other than those obvious troublesome places, the bonnet appeared intact and exhibited only “surface rust.”

I decided that we should take a close look after removing the paint and Bondo. We should try to straighten what time and carelessness had damaged, at least. Maybe we’d find we could retain good portions of the bonnet. And then, maybe we’d have to give up and buy new pieces or perhaps a whole new bonnet.

Now that we’ve “had at” the bonnet for a few days, I think we’ll be able to restore most of the bonnet. It is now completely apart, and we’ve straightened the nose, more or less. It will require some removal and replacement of metal along the rounded framing corners of the “mouth.” That area had been repaired (in a manner of speaking) by welding new metal straps to cover some mouth damage. Those straps were then curved roughly and smoothed over with Bondo. Then, apparently, the mouth got crushed again and was only repaired hastily with a smattering of sheet metal and more Bondo. There is a good chance that the center section of the bonnet may have been a replacement, since when we took off the lower layer of Bondo, we discovered British Racing Green paint at the base. We found no other evidence of “BRG” on the body when we removed the paint, and I suspect that the person applying that ancient layer of Bondo was too lazy to remove the paint. It is likely that the bonnet had been disassembled at one time and the center section replaced with a used section from a green car.

The sad thing about pounding out many of the dents was how little it actually took: a couple of whacks with a rubber mallet completely removed some rather large (though not deep) dents that had been rudely pulled out and bondoed for effect. Some areas of the bonnet had Bondo mounded to about an inch thickness. Yuck.

The other metal replacement is along the seams between the sections — the tabs where bolts and screws hold the pieces together. Although these tabs are sound in the uppermost sections of the bonnet, the lower section and the tabs along the lower front wings are due for removal and replacement. This was not surprising, since the front bumpers for the car were no longer attached, nor could they even be attached. There was no metal left to secure them, since the rust along the lower seam had weakened the bumper attachment points. No upper bolts required the cutting blade; a couple along the lower tabs needed that treatment. (I have been surprised at how few bolts we’ve had to cut off — which either speaks to the power of penetrating fluids or the hardware that Jaguar chose.)

Aaron and I finished the welding work on the right wing section on Easter weekend. We replaced sections of the foremost part of the wing along the headlight surround and the park light hole. This replacement renewed the lower tab that attaches to the lower section of the bonnet. There were also sections along the lower section of the wing that had rust perforation. The biggest welding job was reinforcement of the tab that attaches to the center section of the bonnet — the topmost section of the wing. This was a little tricky, since we found that reinforcing that tab changed some of the bending chracteristics of the whole piece. Basically, it bowed a little, so that the tab at the top of the wing didn’t fit flush against the center section. We had to apply pressure to bring the sections together snugly. In order to correct this difficulty, we pounded the attached metal a bit, so that the new metal would stretch against the tab. This helped, though it did not entirely correct the bow. The sections do fit together well now, and they are ready for finer mending after we complete the repair of the other wing and the lower bonnet section (the lower part of the mouth).

There are obvious areas that we need to work on, but I want to get the entire outer assembly together before we try to pound out any more little dents. The danger with the final work is being overzealous: too much pounding leaves you with flattened andstretched metal. That is much harder to deal with than creases, since regrouping metal is technically tougher to do than flattening it out. So, we have to be careful. I don’t want to try the limits of Bondo, as my forebears with this car apparently did, but I don’t want to ruin a metal part by trying to make it perfect without Bondo. Oddly enough, perfection without Bondo is rare.

Bondo is a friend, I keep telling myself. Just don’t get too free with it, I also remind myself.

Philosophical segue: An interesting thing in perception of one’s Jag crops up from time to time. We often see in the half-shaped metal a form emerge. Or perhaps the form simply meets an imagined hope somewhere in our heads. I look at this old bonnet, and I do indeed see that it is beat up and misshapen by time and abuse. But it seems also an image of sculpture, to me. I drag my wife out to “gaze upon the car,” and I can tell she’s not quite as excited as I am. She smiles and reassuring tells me that “it’s coming along” or that “it will be nice when it’s done.” She thinks it’s nice, but it’s not quite art.

Not yet. Not yet. But it’s coming along.