List Gurus
I'm working on the fender mounts. I have a pattern and have talked with
investment casting places. I wanted to test how they would work before
committing to molds and such so I milled a pair of prototypes out of aluminum.
I took them out to my friends place to mount them up on his 100 and take a
drive and do the real world evaluation.
Well there's good news and bad news. I have six of these fender mounts and
they are all the same , interchangeable, so thats how I made the prototypes.
The car I was to test on is an early BN-1 #598 off the line, alloy hood and
trunk and different fender mounts. These mounts are from a different
pattern,different shape and were sand cast, the later ones like I have were
investment cast ( lost wax cast ) We have all heard the stories about the pile
of fenders on the assembly line if one didn't fit try another etc. That's
nothing. These fender mounts had been hack sawed. Both ends cut off and both
bolt slots sawn wider. This must have been done at the factory as the car is
low mileage and unmolested. We had to hack up my beautiful hand made
prototypes to get them to fit into the fender slot. We finally got them fitted
up but at that point the pins on the windshield wouldn't slip in the holes by
about an eighth of an inch so we couldn't test drive the car. It
does look great at the higher angle. The view through the windshield is good
and it should deflect the air stream just over your head. Now I need to fit
the mounts on a later car and hopefully do a test drive.
What do we know about these factory modified fender mounts? At what point
did these parts change to a new standard pattern? It takes so much hand
fitting I don't think I can make these to sell as a product unless it's more of
a bolt on with the later cars.
I've been fooling with Healeys for a long time and I keep seeing new stuff.
Regards
Ray Juncal
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