First up, I purchased a cheap pipe bender, some 1.5" stainless pipe and a bending brake for the panels (coming soon).
After practicing on some scrap metal, we discovered the press benders are not as easy as they look. It is quite easy to crush a piece of pipe. Anyway, after a bit of Googling and experimentation, this is what we found:
- Fill the pipe with wet sand. Jam something in there so you can keep the sand under pressure.
- Grease up the shoe and rollers.
- Go nice and slow and keep an eye on it.
After a few hours (yep, we work slow), we had two pipes done with minimal crushing in the bends. We're pretty happy with the result.
I'm glad to say that I'm recovering quickly from the hernia operation, so while Tim was bending pipes, I was busy finishing the welding of the radiator support.
On the second day, Tim got out the Satan Spawn (aka Paint Stripper) and cleaned up some of the interior panels. It's not a nice job at all and somehow Tim always gets the messy jobs... The panels came up pretty good. See the pic below. We haven't decided yet if we're going to carpet the interior or leave it as exposed metal :)
Finally I gave the garage a much-needed clean. I couldn't help but take a few pics of the GT40 when it's not surrounded by mess. Loving it!
Well, that's it for now. Next up, we need to finish off the rest of the pipework and start the panelling. The pipework around the thermostat is going to be very tricky. We've added a new bar across the back of the cabin and it's going to make things a bit tight in that area.
Hey Simon, it doesn’t matter if you were slow with bending the pipes. The important part is that they were done well. The infrastructure has to be so in order for the finished car to be safe. I’m looking forward to seeing more of your progress. Best of luck!
ReplyDelete-Enoch