Took a few weeks off to overhaul my daily Viggen. Getting back onto this, mostly with the intent of sealing it up, making it driveable and putting some DD miles on it (and to get my 242 in the garage for a couple weeks to get ready for the perpetually delayed New England driving season).
Didn't take any pictures, but we did bend up a piece of 1" square tube and fit it into the gap at the bottom of the hatch where we got the bottom off. Clamped it into place with the 3m body adhesive and that stuff certainly does what it is supposed to. Oh, should note that Mike K Sr. spent some amount of time carving that square tube up so that it wasn't too heavy for the lift struts.
Also used some seam sealer to goo-up the front section of the bed where we built the corners and the water dam for the hatch. Had some bigger gaps in the corners (must need to calibrate my 3d scanner and CNC table.. oh wait we built this thing on top of a garbage can with an angle grinder..) so mixed up some epoxy and thickened it with micro-balloons which were dug out from some far corner of the work bench.
*open container to a poof of dust*
"cough cough, this is a lot finer than I expected, cough"
"what's it made out of?"
"glass"
"really?"
"yeah..."
*covers nose with shirt*
I used a section of the roof to make a cover plate for the inside of the tailgate. I originally made it out of a piece of the 14 gauge but it just made the tailgate way too heavy. It's held on with cap heads threaded into the 1" frame so it's removable. Will run some weather strip around to help with water and rattles.
I used a spare amphenol connector to make a little jumper for the license plate lights. It's long enough to stay connected with the gate down, but can also be unplugged for convenience, and it will tuck away with the gate up.
While I fiddled around with door panels and trim, Senior worked on the James Bond license plate. It's mounted on a hinge to provide hideaway access to the received for the tailgate support post. Yes, test fit was a bit crooked and will be fixed - we'll forgive him
not only does it flip down to hide the magic, it's also visible from behind with the gate down AND it will be illuminated!
I'll congratulate ourselves a bit on how this tailgate is coming together, it is really the thing that sets the car apart and is a completely unique solution. This morning Senior emailed me:
The tail gate is my favorite part of the truck
• Lots of fabrication in the steel curved top piece that came out really well – and we beat the **** out of it after warping it all to hell
• Bonding the steel cap to the aluminum – counter sunk welded in studs!
• Connecting the aluminum tail gate to the steel frame
• The drawer slides with the pivot bushings
• The too-cool male and female support parts
• And a swinging plate
Yeah... it's damn cool.
Oh, I glued in my test windows too. So the cab is now closed up. Made a bunch of windows and I'm glad I did, because now I know exactly what I want to do for the final product.
In general I was unenthusiastic about basically reassembling the car just for this summer, only to undo it all and get back into body work. BUT, I'm glad to be doing all of this test fitting, trim figuring etc with the car in primer and not in color. Although I can feel it will be hard to get motivated to tear it down and finish the bodywork