Tutto Italiano 2

 These are part two of the photos taken at the Lars Anderson show.

Tutto Italiano

Tutto Italiano occured at the Lars Anderson Museum last week and a couple things caught my eye.  It's just eye candy.  Enjoy.

7-3-13

 The steering wheel came home from the powder coaters and looks very good.

The inside-the-door pockets have been remade with aluminum rather than the original cardboard.  I used the original cardboard for the patterns and did some pretty lousy aluminum welding on the back side.  Wray gave me some pointers, so I got a little better through the process, but it ain't pretty back there but it also should never be seen.

Front license frame

Wray locked us out this weekend, so in an effort to keep moving I decided to make a front plate holder.  Mass is clamping down on the use of front plates and although any front plate screws up the lines, I am not anxious to get fined $150.  I have never liked the US version of the plate holder on the XK120.  It is mounted above or below the bumper on one side or the other on the front.  If it is mounted below, it blocks a vent to the brakes.  Mounted above and it just looks crude to me.  So I decided to make a US size holder that mounts below in the middle like the european versions.  Also since I plan on setting directional indicators below the front bumpers, there is a built in conflict. 

The plate holder itself is made from 18 gauge; the bracket from 1/8" stock.  Note the curlique pieces of the bracket are used to miss the front bumpers but still use the bumper bracket hole locations for mounting.  The last shot shows the two bumpers upside down with the holder in the center.  Now if it just doesn't look too silly hanging below the front nose by too much.
 

More Side Curtains

So the extra holes in the side curtain frames have been welded up as well as the brass and chrome pieces that  surround the edges of the new plexiglass.  The frames themselves have been primed and painted and the screw holes tapped out.  The supports have had oversize holes welded up and tapped as well.  And the right hand support which was earlier in four seperate pieces has been welded into one.  So now the supports and the plexiglass edge finishers need to be sent out for stripping the left over chrome off and some industrial smoothing.  The supports need to wait until the doors are reconstructed and then final fitting prior to chrome. 

In other news, I sent the windshield posts and the tail lights out to be chromed and the process failed.  Apparently the impurities of the cast aluminum were not all removed in the stripping and the first coat of copper was having small bubbles pop up.  The place where I took them was very apologetic but said that they don't do enough aluminum to justify getting a new tank full of solution.   So they stripped them down again and I got them back and will have to find another place to send them.  In other news, and I know someone is going to be pretty jealous about this, I am planning to take Wray Schelin's class this coming weekend.