TR2/3/3A front Apron fitting

Body work was originally assembled on a different frame (which was foolishly discarded for other reasons and has been the cause of much extra work!). It is all painted.
The wings are on (less one bolt with is persistently out of place), but the apron sits at least a quarter of an inch lower than the wings. I can see no reason for this unless the inner wheel well is a bit out of shape and the crosspiece sits too low. The only solution I can see is to bolt the apron to the fenders so they are flush and then ream out the holes for the bolts that attach the crosspiece to the inner wheel well and bolt them up tight--very tight! The bonnet should be flush too if the apron is correct.

Any suggestions or comments are very welcome

If possible I will get some pics and post them before I start.

Afterthought. Would extra packing under the front body mount ( on the front crosspiece) raise the apron? I could loosen it easily enough to see if it sprang up. Ah the fiddling!

Dr. Mike,
I am currently working on pretty much the same issue. I am working on a "basket case " car that came in pieces. Much of the body sheet metal has been replaced with used from other cars. So it is basically a diverse set of parts. I have determined that what counts is getting the exterior of the body to fit and look correct. I have been able to get the fenders, apron and bonnet to fit together and look reasonably good. What does not fit is the cross piece under the rear portion of the apron. I looked at some of the possibilities that you mention and decided that changing the mounting of the inner fenders to the frame would not alter the situation at the top to my advantage. So I am currently undertaking adapting the brackets that hold the cross piece under the apron to fit the apron. On one side I determined that I needed to raise the bracket about 5/8". So I made up a extender /splint to make up the difference in height. I am still working on the passenger side where the bracket and cross piece miss each other by 1/8" in the forward position and the holes in the cross piece do not match the bracket holes but do match the holes all of the way across that cross piece. I am luckier than you as my car is still unpainted. I decided to make sure the panels matched up before proceeding with any painting.

A couple of things I would mention are the fit of the front fenders at the door A post and the 3 bolts on the bottom of the fender. I suggest a sequence of bolting the fender and do not worry about those 4 bolts on the apron until the fender is bolted at the bottom and A post because the whole nose will move. For the sequence, I put the top bolt in the fender at the A post so the front fender is push forward all the way and work down on those bolts then make sure the bottom of the front fender bolts go in a little to help pull the nose down and back. Those 2 places will alter the fit of the nose of the car a lot. Plus the fenders need to be loose to get apron in with the beading. A couple of dry fits with the beading not in place gives a clearer picture of the actual angle of the nose of the car and the alignment of those 4 bolts through the tie piece. And yes I have had to slot those 4 bolts before especially if the car has been damaged or you are using a post 60K fender on an early car and the opposite is also true. In addition, I have left the tie piece completely off before and bolted the fender to the apron to see where it did not fit. Moreover, it can be A Real Pain just showing what I have done in the pas!t

If you follow my saga, you will see that I had to re-locate the apron cross brace mounts to make everything line up. And that was on a car that all the parts were originally on.

Before altering the cross brace, though, temporarily fit the bonnet to see how the front and rear gaps look. If they are large, then re-locating the brace is the way to go. If the bonnet gaps for and aft are small, then moving the brace is going to compound the problem.

I ended up slotting the holes across the apron so that I could pull the apron down to match the bonnet. The car was all original as far as I know.

Don't know how they would have got it to align before with the holes as they were.

David

After the trouble you others have had getting an unmolested car back together, I do not feel very bad at all. The car I am working on was in a roll over accident. It apparently did have a roll bar that was bolted to the rear deck behind the seats, not the frame. So that area took a bit of straightening. The car came without a windshield ( I understand why) and I have had to correct some other areas in the body that got "tweaked". If this car comes out looking good, I will almost feel like a magician.
My update is that I used a splice to extend vertically the bracket for the cross piece on the drivers side and then enlarged the holes in the passenger side bracket. Looks like it will all fit now. My big concern is that when I again take the body off of the frame to get it painted the panel alignments will all be off again. Interesting to hear the situation about using a post 60000 fender on early car. Yes I have that situation also. That explains a few things that I was curious about.
Sp53 I appreciate your detailed listing of the order you used to reassemble the car.