A beautiful sunny day here, warm enough to have the garage doors open and get busy. The hood trim is all polished and installed, and I got the hood back on without scratching anything up. Polishing aluminum is very dirty work, just buffing up those pieces my face was black. Hard to wash off too, I still look like I have eyeliner on.
After that was done, a short bike ride with our dog Ari for some exercise, and I was back in the garage. I was going to put away tools, clean up the mess and take the mower off the lawn tractor, but it was more fun to fix the hood ornament.
I have a ’35 Auburn flying lady style mascot, made by my buddy “Crafty B”. I had it temporarily mounted on the base of an original Diamond T ornament that was broken. I’d cut the heavy top part of the molding off, and had the Auburn mascot bolted to one of the mounting bosses. Cutting ornament apart left a gaping hole in the base, so I made a filler of a scrap of 1/2″ wide aluminum flat stock, then a pedestal of a scrap of the 1×2″ square stock the side trim is made from. A little work with the grinder gave it nice taper, I annealed it and bent an arc to match the ornament, and bolted it all together with a little JB weld to fill the gaps. It needs final polishing, but it looks like it belongs on the truck.
Cool McCool's Garage 