Update 35 - Bonnet's and Cowl plus a small side project

Progress on the Blue and White car's bodywork has been swift. Steve from Vintage Sheet Metal has been in touch to show some of the progress pictures he's taken.

Thanks Steve for taking the pictures thumbs

When we took the car up to VSM we brought along the old cowl to give some idea as to the height of the original cowl, as we're convinced that it didn't run a full height cowl originally giving more of a low line front end.

Now, to give you some insight, the cowl took the brunt of the impact into the Castle Coombe armco at 55mph. It was pretty very twisted and when Steve had got his hands on it, we'd bent, twisted it to try to get it back into some resemblance of it's original shape - we'd written it off as scrap.

Well, you'd never believe this but Steve's managed to do some serious metal bashing and rolling to get it back to it's original shape - respect!

Before:


After:


Next up, the bonnets, we'd salvaged the brass brackets for the centre hinge but the hinge itself was toast. In terms of the bonnets, we wanted super sport style with the scoop giving plenty of coverage to the air-filter. Steve's done a great job, the shots below showing where he got to when he had the serious question of:

"how many louvres?"

..........well when presented with this sort of choice... picking a number can actually be a bit tough....So.. where to go with this one.... Ah.

"as many as will fit!!"

These are currently being punched into these beauties.







So sometime this week, it will be collected and readied for paint.

Side Project - Helmet Paint

So in preparation for heading back to the track and tbh inspired as a gift to my wife as part of her birthday treats. Back in Jan at the Autosport show I hooked up with a helmet painter. Piers Dowell of PDP design who does all Stilo's helmets for the UK (read most of the F1 grid) and a whole bunch of other amazing art.

A sample of his work is below along with a link to his web-site which has a more complete gallery:



http://www.piersdowell.com/

So, having found an artist, onto the designs - well with Anne driving Woodstock and with inspiration of a Austrian artist (google Hundertwasser images) we have the following design:



and whilst it not not in the original plan, we added to the job-list reticently with the following design being produced based on inspiration of vintage Salt Flat hot rod racers along with wanting a caricature of both my wife Missprint and son as woven in somehow. I think Piers has come up with a fantastic design. (The caricatures will be coloured in on the actual helmet).



So having waited for 4 months for our paint slot to come round (did I mention Piers is a VERY busy artist). The helmets are ready to collect next weekend. So some pics of how they have turned out will be posted next week.

Needless to say Anne and I are really pleased with what Piers has managed to design for us and I can only expect that the final result will be beyond our expectations. Having popped up to visit Piers in his studio (a good 3hrs drive for me) I can also say he's a really nice guy and the quality of his work is really something.

Looking forward to next week's developments.