One way to do it. Home-made tool to dimple the sheet metal. Short piece of 1" aluminum round, flathead allen bolt - works better than the flathead phillips shown, nut. 3/8-16 fwiw. Don't use a stainless allen bolt and stainless nut, they'll gall. Use a grade 3 or 5 or run a mild steel nut on a stainless allen bolt if that's all you have handy. Length of aluminum rod depends on the reach and bolt length, but strive for compactness. Use a countersink to match the angle of the flathead bolt. Shown here, a piece of aluminum angle that bolts to the frame via threaded holes in the frame. Note that the Dzus spring is backwards, but it works fine that way. Retained by pop rivets. Use #6 machine screws with phillips head and standard nuts for mockup. Afterward, mount the Dzus, spring etc. with #6 machine screws and #6 nylocks. A little cl***ier than pop rivets, but the rivets work ok and if needed are easily drilled out and removed for painting the panel etc. The pic shows the type Dzus used. I like these better than Dzus' without the plate. They don't tear up paint and are easily replaced if necessary. Simple spacer jig so you can find where the spring mounting tab threaded holes (8-32) go. The "U" channel is on a home-made hood panel. It gets a piece of wire/welding rod and the fold completed later on. This is a simple adjustable for height bracket to locate your grille shell if you don't have a radiator. And should probably be used before you order a radiator. My 31 on 32 rails roadster takes a stock style 32 radiator that is 2" shorter than the stock 32 radiator. I had a 1" shorter radiator, but the hood line still wasn't low enough for a good design line from grille shell to cowl. Along the same lines, a 32 on 32 rails radiator should probably be 1" shorter than stock otherwise it's tough to get a good design line that flows well visually. Same setup on the 32, works well, 15 years and 49,000 miles down the road. Shows how the Dzus with mounting plate looks on the outside. The far right of this pic shows the front mount for the Dzus mounting plate. It's 1/8" aluminum strap drilled for spring mounting with 1" OD aluminum spacers to set it out the correct amount. Bolts on with 1/4-20 bolts and distance is easily changed with a different spacer and bolt. I like this better than welding a Dzus tab on. The welded tabs can get damaged easily when you're working on the frame plus you can't get into the corner with a welder to weld on the backside of the tab. Here's a better pic of the front spring bracket.
Very helpful and informative. I love these types of tech threads. Stuff that's not way over my head and that can be done in a garage without a Pullmax.
Great tech piece! A hint for installing hood lacing to avoid that frayed yucko look at the ends. Measure and mark for cutting. Before cutting, wrap tape tightly around the lacing, cut through the middle of the tape which keeps each end from fraying. Soak the ends with "super glue" before removing tape. The fabric stays nice and tight. If the light tan color bothers you color it with a brown majic marker before glueing.
Durn ya Jay! Right in time, as usual! Great tips, I was contemplating wasting $34 at a certain Large catalog outfit for the dimpling tool. The example garage-made is just right. Thank you sir!
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