Anyone file the hood edge?

[Shvegel]

Hi,
I know the hoods of our cars were fit by filing the edges until proper gaps were achieved. My body man is down to the final fitting of the fenders etc before welding and we are trying to figure out if he can just file the edges a mm or 2 to get the gaps he wants of if after filing he will the have to re-solder the edge. I would assume the hood edge was soldered during manufacturing and will not need any further work but we figured we would ask before creating a nightmare.

[Larry & Norma]

The hood is Aluminium, don't think you can solder that!

[Rolf-Dieter ✝︎]

Make sure he knows what he is doing filing and rounding this thin edge takes skill. It must end up perfectly straight or it will be noticeable to the naked eye.

[wwheeler]

So is it for sure that the edges were filed off to fit? I have heard many things about this but never any detailed info about how it was done. How was it finished off after it was filed? Applying heat to aluminum skin would be frightening  

[Shvegel]

Larry and Norma,

FYI  http://www.harrisproductsgroup.com/en/Products/Alloys/Soldering/Lead-Free-Solders/Al-Solder-500.aspx

Rolf - Dieter,
He's very meticulous. The fact that he can't get the front and rear hood gaps perfect is driving him nuts.

[Benz Dr.]

The hood is actually two pieces that are spot welded together. As long as you don`t get any seperation between the two halves you should be able to file small amounts off. The edge of the hood is painted and the two halves are so close together that many see it as being one piece without noticing that there`s an upper and lower panel.

[stickandrudderman]

Many years ago I was restoring a 190 where the gap was too large due to someone over-dressing the bonnet.
I had the edge of the bonnet built up by a very experienced aluminium welder and the biggest difficulty he had was all the contamination emanating from the join between the two skins.We then filed it back to get the correct gaps.
I still lost money on the car though..........

[Shvegel]

Stick and Rudderman,
That is exactly what I was worried about. Trying to get anything to stick to that gap of 45 year old aluminum fuzz would be near impossible.

As an update my bodyman is so meticulous he just sent me photos with the gaps labeled down to 2 decimal places.  2.86mm, 2.54mm etc.

[spraydav]

We fitted a new bonnet/ hood to a customers car earlier this year and you can see from the pic attached there was a good 10-15mm overlap each side to remove, (black marker pen line shows where the new bonnet sat on the wings and front panel).  Initial cut was marked out with tape and trimmed with an air-saw, then it was a case of file by hand and eye until we were happy with the gaps- pretty daunting at first but we're happy with the final results, check out more pictures at- www.matchboxrestorations.co.uk

[spraydav]

Further to previous post, we did have an area around 30mm long where the two layers de-laminated after cutting and filing, we solved this with modern technology and used 3M metal bonder, some of these adhesives are stronger than welds!!

[Valvechatter]

Certainly appears to be a nice fit now. Good lokking car!
Lin