Well, almost! We've made a fair bit of visible progress today, trial mounting the scuttle, the bonnet, and the nosecone. This is more straightforward that it sounds...
The scuttle goes on first. It's quite easy to do - the pointy bits at the back of the scuttle meet with the crease line in the bodywork. There are just a couple of notches to make underneath the scuttle so it clears the bar holding the steering column mounts. This was then taped in place. Then the bonnet went on, with the shut lines to the scuttle nice and tight, and taped to the bodywork as well. This was difficult as our bonnet has sagged a fair bit in storage. A tip - store the bonnet upright on its end, not flat, so it doesn't sag under its own weight.
Next, there's a fair bit of excess GRP at the front of the main tub - we had to take off about 4 inches or so. To measure this out, we offered up the nosecone and looked to see how much was left to go. The nose went on and off about 20 times, to trim it gently without taking too much off it. It's not quite perfect, but for our first go fixing bodywork, it's not bad! We did find that the brackets we mounted at the front of the engine bay to support the bodywork were a bit too narrow (we used 35x20mm ali angle, with the 20mm side on top), and there's not enough overlap on the nosecone lip to drill a hole for a bolt. We need to change the bracket for some 35x35 angle to make sure we've got the room. With the nosecone in place, we can take off the bonnet and put it back whenever - we've taped it in for now to try and persuade it back to shape.
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