build diary

November 14, 2004: Well, the windshield frame is finished and the side braces are ready to go.
I started over with my setup for fastening the side braces to the frame because I just couldn't get the finish I wanted. A note - countersunk fasteners are not very tolerant of any sort of mistake! Your eye can easily pick out an off-center fastener. Some careful cutting and measuring has given me an acceptable fit now. The side braces are done and look good. They took a little bit of tweaking in terms of angles to allow them to sit flat on the sides of the car but it did go fairly quickly. I started to install the glass - and hit a problem. The glass must be very slightly larger than the plywood. Enough that my tight tolerances were too tight but not enough to notice when you lay the glass on the wood! Once the inner tube was added, it was obvious that there was no way to install the frame around it. So I have two options - make the glass slightly smaller or make the frame bigger. I'll ask the glass shop tomorrow if it's possible to grind this down, and how. I'm happy with how everything else turned out but I had really hoped to drive the car today with the new windshield. Oh well...

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