Frankenbonnet

You know the old saying, "You only have to be brave for a moment"?  Well, I was brave today.

After a week of agonizing over what I should do with The Pig, I finally manned up and made a decision. I decided to cut off the front of The Pig (the "head") and transplant it onto the bonnet that is good except for the front couple of inches (which I shall call "Scarface").

The brave part wasn't until about halfway through, but it was definitely an "oh man I better not mess this up" moment, because I'd end up with nothing if I screwed up.

So I started by cutting off Scarface's head.  MWAHAHAHA

Then, after measuring VERY CAREFULLY, I cut the head off The Pig.  (To tell the truth, that sounds kind of tasty.) This was the brave part. I spent something like $300 on The Pig, including shipping and blasting--what am I, nuts?  Yes.  I am nuts.  I was careful to cut right at the edge of the internal bracing, so you wouldn't see the weld from underneath unless you looked for it.

It was kind of a pain.  Removing the front of The Pig was a simple as cutting straight across and then removing the remnants of the underside bracing. But I needed to save that bracing intact on the Scarface bonnet. It took a while, but it turned out okay.

Then I set the head of The Pig on the body of Scarface. Behold my measuring awesomeness.

Then, some welding. I still haven't mastered welding long seams without distortion.  I tried really hard to keep things lined up and cooled off.  But it came out well enough and I will only need, you guessed it, "a little bit of filler" to make it right. It will be less than 1/8", so I'm OK with that.

The end result...

 

I'm happy. The bonnet is straight and solid throughout, and no hills or gullies anywhere except at the weld line, which is not too bad, actually. And it lines up pretty nicely.  The driver's side is a little off, but I know what I need to do to fix it, and it's not the bonnet.

 

This time, it really will only need a little bit of filler to look good.

So the head transplant is complete, and the patient is still alive and looking good. I have to remove the little bracket that holds the prop rod from the body of The Pig and weld it to Scarface (which I christen thee "Frankenbonnet"). Then, I'm back in business with the filler.

I might get one more weekend, maybe two, before The Man Upstairs turns on the broiler that is Arizona in the summer. If I do get two weekends, that would be great--I have a long weekend all to myself at the beginning of May when Juliette and Julia go to Astro Camp. (I wish I was going too. I mean, Astro Camp!  I never got to do stuff like that when I was a kid, because they didn't have that stuff then. So I'll console myself with a long weekend of car stuff.)