The bonnet now fits. I had real problems with the back end of the bonnet being way too low – low enough that the coorners took 1″ gouges out of the new paint on the wing tops all the way back to the washers and dome bolts. It’s not so severe that the repairs will be visible.
This was traced to 2 problems:
a) the wing tops were sitting a little too high. This was remedied by loosening the wing top-bulkhead brackets and wingtop-wingside bolts and pushing the top down while the side panels stayed fixed, and;
b) the bonnet hinge clasps on the bulkhead had uncurled massively from the heat of galvanising, dropping the plastic barrel level by about 4mm and pushing the bonnet forward about 10mm. The clasps were re-curled to some extent with a slotted bar, but curved steel plate shims had to be made up and bonded inside the clasps to hold the plasic barrels in the correct position.
The tub and hard top side panels have been delivered to the painters.
Final thing to report is that I have finally gotten round to trimming down the doors for the Jerrycan lockers. 19mm needed removing from the bottom in order to clear the new sills. This was done by hacksaw for a neater finish than the jigsaw could manage. Came out very well, though one of the stiffeners fell off the inside of the door – all the spot welds had come away (I suspect the aluminium had some surface contamination when fixed, giving weak welds). It was simple to fix, though. Unfortunately, these need stripping again for new paint, as the paint applied early in this rebuild (same time as bulkhead) seems to have reacted with something and blistered profusely. Minor setback, but it can be done at the same time as the tub.
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