Cody had set the hood (bonnet) on the Austin Healey to get a look see on the louvers....
…..and this past Tuesday he came back to the shop so we could finish up the louvers in the trunk lid (boot). I must say this was the most involved and challenging louver job we have done so far. The trunk lid has a lot of crown, and with a 6” rise in the center, we needed to use the rotation fixture ala Mini Cooper wheel hub. We added to this a hinge mechanism to allow rotation up and down. The limits of the machine's throat height and high crown also meant we'd have to punch half the louvers from back end first, then rotate the lid and tooling and approach the rest from the front end. Now given the extreme flex/twist that the .050 aluminum is prone to, we needed to make sure the cut pattern would be parallel to the last set at the point we rotated from front to back. This required some "gusset" straps clamped in place to limit the twist.
Before this was added, any twist of the panel would change the outer limits of the cut +/- 1/4". Here's the wheel hub arrangement along with the hinges for up and down adjustment. We needed adjustments along 3 different axis to be able keep all the louvers running true and parallel.
….and we're off....
At this point we were 4 hours in to measuring, clamping, test run (drag the cutter against the panel to scribe the location), rotate 180 front to back, and test the pattern again, just to get to where we could start cutting. …..and another 4 hours to go before we finished. All told, with the time Vince and I spent Saturday working out clamping methods and other details, the layout was approx 4 times that of what it took to do the actual cutting.
….and the time lapse video of the process..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMmm...ature=youtu.be
Yesterday Cody sent me pictures of the trunk lid installed.. These louvers really change the attitude of the car... Badass....
