Made a bit more progress today. The rest of the 7 portholes arrived this afternoon, and were quickly relieved of their end plates. Here’s the full set of 8:
Earlier this morning I made up a template for precisely indicating the holes for the LED’s. I was going to build something in wood and route a recess so I could do all the marking and drilling in a contained cavity, but decided it was too much work. So I made up this paper arrangement on a clipboard, and placed a good sized chunk of refrigerator magnet underneath:
The magnet made it difficult to move the plate around, and once in perfect alignment the end plate stayed exactly where needed to mark both drill points with a spring punch.
A couple of hours later I had all the plates drilled, sanded on both sides, and washed down with wax and grease remover. The best paint I had available for the task was Blitz Black in a spray can, so that’s what is covering one side:
Tomorrow I’ll flip them over and shoot the back sides. Once both sides are dry the plates will be permanently sealed in the porthole castings. The next step is designing whatever I’m going to use for clamps to hold them in the hood. The repop manufacturer didn’t provide any type of attaching clamps. I think this may be because the original 54 Buick porthole clamps might have been part of the fender, permanently formed into the porthole opening. Once the clamps are fabricated, I’ll be ready to start cutting the hood.
As for the electronics, the sequencer kit shipped today, and might arrive by the weekend. The lights shipped earlier and are due to arrive this Thursday. Daily high temps over the last couple of days have been in the low 20’s, but tomorrow and the rest of the week are supposed to be in the low to high 40’s. If everything goes well and the weather warms up that much I may be able to complete this project in the next week or so.