When I was doing the dry build work, originally I fitted the fiberglass bonnet as this has served me very well in the past, but I really wanted a carbon bonnet on there to save an extra kilo or so, hence why I bought the item shown a few posts above..
I also wanted to ”˜tip my hat’ to some DTM stuff that looked nice and function well (more will be highlighted as we go through the final build) ”“ one of which is using the standard rear bonnet mounts with bonnet pins up front ”“ the carbon bonnet I ordered was the full factory copy with all the fixing points underneath ”“ rear mounts as you know look like this:
So after taking a brave pill, I thought about how I was going to drill some holes in a really nice carbon fibre bonnet.
The pins for the front were using the original pin locations I had decided upon for the fibreglass bonnet ”“ these were already welded into place (although quite a few I have seen are drilled and reinforced with body washers, which is also fine):
First up, I made sure that the wings were fitted somewhere near right and the rear mounts adjusted to give a decent panel gap all around the bonnet. Lots of masking tape later, the mocked up bonnet can rest on the pins so you know where to make the first cuts:
And these are marked like so:
Leaving you with something like this (my Dremel is definitely my friend at this stage!), which shows where the holes in the outer skin need to go and these are marked up:
Taking another brave pill and measuring everything again and again just to make sure I haven’t dropped a clanger, cut the smallest holes you can for the pins to poke through like this (you can just see the pins poking through):
Once this is done, there’s more measuring to be done ”“ this is to determine the position of the bonnet pin trims ”“ I like using lockable aerocatches as they come with a handy template to help:
I used 3 reference points on the bonnet to ensure that the catch is straight and symmetrical side to side ”“ note that my original red marks were incorrect in this picture so measuring lots of times really pays off.....!
Once that is done, you can attack the bonnet from the top again to cut out the minimum required for the catch as the fixing bolts are quite close to the edge:
But you’ll see that the reinforcements underneath also need to be trimmed back to allow access for the fixing plate and bolts:
All nice and tidy so now all that’s needed is to fit the catch itself:
And finally you end up with something like this, one of the final jobs before the car heads off for final prep and paint, which hopefully should be in a couple of weeks:
Plenty to get along with in the meantime!
