On Saturday, Elaine, Abby and Neo came by to help move the body off of the buck and onto the frame. Here is Abby.
It was light and went fairly smoothly, although the instructions in the manual were pretty sparse. Eventually we got it into place. Then we tried to re-install the windshield that was assembled 3 years ago with very little luck. Eventually, I determined that Phil, Nathan and I had made something of a mistake back when we drilled the holes into the frame to hold the windshield legs.
In looking back over some old pictures and my work spreadsheet, I figured that we started out drilling the holes right, but had so much trouble with my underpowered drill that we switched to drilling the holes with the body off. We must have miscalculated where the legs of the windshield would go. We got them at the proper angle and basic location, but there was just no way to get them to go through the slots cut in the body.
On Sunday, Nathan came over and I jogged his memory from when we originally did the windshield support holes and how to best fix everything. We decided that only 2 things could possibly have been done wrong--either the body/cockpit mounting was wrong, or the original hole drilling was wrong. We decided to completely fit the body with all mounting points in place to make 100% certain that we would be good to proceed safe in the knowledge that the body was right. So we installed a rollbar, the front body mount pieces and the front and rear quick jacks. The bottom line, was that the body/cockpit were fine. (The sidepipe cutouts may be an issue later, but that is pretty common on these cars). Here are some pics...
Rollbar...
Rear quick jacks...
Front body mounts...
Confident that the body/cockpit was fine, Nathan and I next had to decide what to do about the windshield not being mountable as the holes did not line up. We could have re-drilled new holes, but that is very tough at this stage and the sweep angle of the windshield would only have been about 29 or 30 degrees instead of the desired 37. We could have modified the frame and winshield legs to make it work, but that could have slightly reduced their holding strength and that seemed like a bad idea. So we decided to elongate the slots that were cut in the fiberglass where the legs go through the body to tie into the frame. We filed out about 3/8 of an inch or so. Some previous builders had to do this too. If you look at the first picture in this post with Abby, you can see the windshield leg going through the slot at the wrong angle and not lining up with our holes. Now the old pre-drilled holes are very close to lining up perfectly and we have an exact 37 degree sweep. A little more embiggening (Nate said he learned that word in Engineering School) of the holes will make things fit very well.
So at this point, we knew the windshield was very very close to its proper permanent location and we could proceed to drill the 2 holes in the body to accomodate the wiper arm mounts that I assembled last week. The holes had to be 20 inches apart at a 45 degree angle, and according to many previous builders, the manual is wrong about how close to drill the holes to the windshield. The instructions said 3 inches from the engine bay opening, but everybody agrees that they need to be much closes to the windshield itself. After measuring twice we drilled the 2 holes. You can see one in this picture...
Here are a couple of pics showing the body in place, the windshield at the right angle and the wiper arm holes drilled. We test-fit the wiper assembly and it seems fine.
All of this was painfully done knowing that the wipers are unlikely ever to be used! It is an open car not meant to ever be driven in the rain! But the state of Missouri requires them on all cars, so on they go. And from reading the other builders' posts about these wipers, there may be future troubles with the motor sort of shaking the arms too much and not working well. I doubt that the state inspector will even test them, frankly. Anyway, now the body can come off again and I can start the wiring.
