It’s been a busy weekend. In addition to fitting a new inlet valve mechanism in Nanny’s toilet and replacing a leaking radiator valve in the Mother in Laws central heating system, I’ve even done a bit of metal shaping.
I have a spare engine bay cover for the Amigo and I’m making a new skin for it as a prelude to replacing the skin on my original. Once the original is restored I’ll sell the spare one. I thought it would be a quick win job, a bit of a morale boost. How wrong was I.
The skin is essentially a flat panel. Of course there is no such thing as a flat panel on a car. Even a panel that looks ostensibly flat has to have a shallow crown or it will look like an oil can once it has a shiny coat of paint on it. Somewhat counter intuitively, a shallow crown is probably harder to produce than a lot of shape. A flat panel is really not forgiving of a slight irregularity.
After creating a paper template from the existing panel and cutting a blank, I put my shallowest anvil into the E-wheel and started to gently work the piece. Unfortunately, working it on my own proved to be a mistake. Unable to support the full length of the piece on my own the panels own weight caused uneven stretching, quickly rendering it a failure. Piece number two was more successful. With Jules assisting and a much more methodical approach the right crown was painstakingly achieved. The time consuming exercise was a real eye opener and has made me up my game with the wheel. A dot punch through the paper template allowed me to transfer all of my dimensions onto the panel and I then punched out a hole at each corner and snipped out the flash between what will become flanges. Folding those flanges over is going to be a story all on it’s own!
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