One of the jobs which really needs doing is to do a bit of fettling around the cowl and the grille. The grille is a clumsy fit. It sits in a groove at the top of the cowl, but it can slide from side to side, and this means that the vertical strips may not be centralised, or stay centralised. When the grille moves in the cowl it's a metal to metal movement, so it will rub the paint off the inside of the cowl, leaving bare aluminium. At least the constant rubbing will rub away the aluminium oxide.
At the bottom, the grille is held by two M6 allen headed setscrews in from the front - first through the number plate box (on cars with over-riders) - then through the bottom band on the grille, then through the lower cross brace between the inner wing valances into penny washers and nuts. This is drilled 'freehand' and each of my cars have has the holes opened out. In one case considerably opened out!!! Full bumper cars I believe are the same but you'll see the bolt heads visible in the strip across the bottom of the grille.
On all my three cars I've reversed the setscrews, so in from the back with a penny washer (held in place with DST), then through the grille lower band. This can be secured in place with washers & nuts, leaving enough thread to take the number plate box, which can then be taken off if necessary without disturbing the grille.
There's one more thing. The number plate box will rub against the lower part of the cowl and take the paint off. This can be sorted with spacer washers to move it away from the cowl, but I also add taper washers because I don't like the front number plate pointing at the sky. Finally the lower part of the grille may touch the edges of the cowl and rub the paint off. Here I've added some small leather buffers. At the top of the grille I've added a leather band inside the cowl, and when reasembled found that I could also insert a neoprene strip to hold the grille away from the cowl paint.
So................this is how it looks with setscrews reversed and grille secured.
But before that I had some carbon fibre kicking about and finally found a use............
And on Bumble I added some neoprene neoprene to edge the cowl and direct more air through the radiator. So I did this again - This needed two holes drilling each side in the inner wing valances. You can see the slotted grille securing hole here.
I had a look at my badge bar and removed the centre badge - more is less etc. I've added grommets to the bolt heads to provide a buffer between the nuts and the cowl paint.
As a reminder, the stainless plate is an MGB front number plate backing plate which is a perfect fit.
Here are the two horns..............the wiring is all there and just needs releasing.
And here it is re-assembled.
