This is my test end with the Cougar light boxes, and door resting in a spare grill face. Since I ordered new fenders anyways, I cut the orginals and used them as end caps/stands.
After it looked like my test "ends" would work, I went ahead and cut my original grill. The second one I had gotten seemed to be better and less warped or bent in the middle, so my original got to donate the "ends" or the door cover part of the grill.
This is after the bending and welding:
Here is the d-side, and how it welded up sweet as pie:
And the d-side again with my weld job all cleaned up:
With all the banging and rough working I figured this piece was going to go through, I left the ends on until the last possible moment to try and minimize bending and warpage.
Here I have done my initial hammer and dolly work to beat out the "C" "H" and "E" on the p-side, which I mirrored on the d-side. In retrospect I think I should have made some relief cuts with my dremmel and welded them up to smooth out these letters as it turned out to be quite the chore. However this was before I really knew how much time I was going to spend with my dremmel on this project.
So there you go, this is today's update on this craziness...