Today I finished the second side panel on the TO-35 hood. It was almost as enjoyable as the first one... It did take less time, but then getting things all put together was a lot more difficult than I would have expected, but I'm getting ahead of myself. This first photo is the right-side panel before doing any work to it. I wonder, is it sacrilege to use a John Deere tractor as a table for a Ferguson tractor part?
I squared up the bottom of the panel to get a straight piece of metal to weld to, like I did with the first one, then started filling in divots with weld.
Ah, the familiar yellow sheet metal from the Barracuda quarter panel.
I cut some corners (ha ha) on this second piece by cutting up to the black line on two ends of the middle piece, then bent it downward to make up the bottom of the part. If you recall in the first side I did, I made multiple cuts upward, then bent the small strips downward and re-welded them together. I did it that way because I thought I needed a more-formed bottom to the part, but I found out later I didn't. This second panel went half as slow as the first panel.
I had to weld in a tiny patch on the back side of this edge.
This photo below shows the semi-finished product.
And here's the front chin panel holding the two side panels.
Next are a couple photos outside.
Since the bottoms of the inner supports (that the chin panel bolts to) were also hacked off, I have to fabricate some sort of new supports for the chin piece to bolt to.
Below is a mockup of my plan.
And below are the finished products.
I had to make spacers to fit onto the two bolts in the above photo to take up space between the heads of the bolts and the sides of the chin piece. I used a hacksaw to cut the thing in half, as a cut-off wheel would have been too wide.
This next photo shows the backside of the conglomeration.
It took probably 45 minutes to mount the hood back onto the tractor, as the two mounting holes in the side panels that meet up with holes in the front frame were too close together. I'm not sure how that could happen, as the width of the side panels is governed by the width of the new "made in India/Pakistan" chin piece (hmm, maybe that's why). I finally got things pried into place, but now I think the inside of the grill is pressing on the front of the radiator, such that the hood doesn't close all the way. Sigh.....
Post-script: It's the next day and I took the hood off the tractor again to try and fix things. I disassembled everything and took the side panels over to the Harbor Freight press. I supported the edges of the side panels and pressed down on the center mounting bosses to try and get more distance between the two bosses when everything is back together. Below shows the process on one of the side panels.
Guess what? It worked. With the hood all back together again, it actually fit a lot better, and now the hood closes all the way, too.
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