With Wings As Eagles: Craig P. Steffen's Blog

starts with a single part

2009 October 14 23:57

I've been talking about pavement a lot lately; but now, that should be done. When I get home tomorrow, I will be able to park in the newly paved parking space for the first time ever. Yay!

So...hopefully I'll be working on the Beetle again this weekend. The last time I worked on it, I've been putting the tin pieces together and attaching them. The problem is that I've put a new muffler on, a new intake manifold and a new tin piece under the crank pulley. This mix with the original tin pieces means that several things don't quite line up quite right. The piece under the pulley, for instance, is apparently for a different style of tin and so there's a big gap.

Here's a photo of the gap; this is just to the left of the crank pulley and the back of the block:

So I just decided to make a piece of aluminum that will fit as a cover over the hole. Here's the starting piece:

So after cutting and bending and cutting and bending, here's the finished aluminum piece that will fill the gap:



So I've conceptualized, designed, and fabricated a part out of sheet aluminum. 8000 more, and I could build an airplane.