8-29-05
Wow, Time really goes quick when your busy!
It's been months since my last update. I know..I know... I'm in
trouble. hehe
After I got the fiberglass doors on and aligned, I decided to put a
one-piece fiberglass front end on FourBanger. I bought it from
hairyglass.com. I brought it home and unpackaged it to test fit it on
the front end. This front end is about 2 inches longer than a standard
nose. This means I'm going to have to extend the cowl hood to fit. The
fender area by the doors was about 7 inches longer than stock. You can
see in the picture below that the fender goes all the way up to the
windshield. This extra material will have to be trimmed down. I had to
make my own custom mounts to mount this nose onto my car. Mostly round
bar and tzus fasteners will be used to secure it.
Here is the first test fit of the new glass front end. The underside of
the nose goes all the way under the radiator support. It should provide
good aerodynamics.
Here is a view of the extra material that needs to be cut from the new
front end. It was originally made for a pro-mod style mustang. I will
adapt it to fit my stock car. Hopefully, it will blend in and won't be
too noticable. I'm going for the "wolf in sheep's clothing" look.
The new nose on the ground. Here, I'm assessing what needs to be cut
out so it will fit. All of the material behind the headlights needs to
be cut out so I can fit my hood on.
Here I've started making the first relief cuts into the fender area so
the front end will sit level on the car. From here, I will create
brackets to begin mounting the front end.
After MANY relief cuts.... The new front end is mounted!!!
I used 3 tzus fasteners in the nose, one tzus fastener per side in the
cowl area by the windshield, and two fasteners per side down by the
body molding. I will be adding a few more fasteners on the bottom of
the nose under the radiator support. The whole front end is very
secure. I doubt i'll have any problems with it coming loose.
The next thing to do is extend the hood about 2 inches to cover the gap
that is next to the windshield/cowl area.
Here you can see the round bar I used to make my front mount support
system. One fastener is in the Ford logo location, and two fasteners
are in the front bumper area.
The side is trimmed and mounted. One fastener is in the
upper area by the windshield and two along the body molding area. Per
side.
These fasteners will be hidden by the windshield trim and the body
molding. Nobody should be able to tell that this is a fiberglass front
end. It looks pretty stock. hehe
One of the hardest things about this nose is it's alignment to the
doors and the rest of the car. I spent many hours trying to get the
right angles for the fasteners.
Now I had to extend the headlights about 2 inches forward so they fit
in the extended nose, and cut out the side marker light holes. VERY
time consuming!
Now the headlights are in. I still have to trim some fiberglass around
the headlights.
Here you can see my hood and how I have extended the back area. I used
extra flat pieces of fiberglass to make the hood area's extension. I
used cardboard covered with aluminum foil as a mold so I could lay
fiberglass down for the cowl. It came out perfect. In the below pics, I
was finished with the drivers side of the hood (left side of this
picture) and just begining to work on the passenger side.
Finished side. Awaiting some duraglass/bondo.
I had to modify my hood hinges so they would accept my extended hood. I
had to modify the arc in which the hinges swing. I used some old hood
hinges to add pieces of hinge arm onto my good ones. It worked perfect
first time I tried them.
Well, That's it for now. I should have the hood all trimmed up this
week.
Not much left to do on the front end. It's almost ready for paint!
I'll try to get some pictures of the full car this week.
Fiberglass itches........
