In the Jan. 24th. post I described how the fiberglass body was narrower where the windshield mounts and how we put shims behind the hinges to take up the space. After some thinking about that, it was determined that it would be a rust trap between the shims and hinges. Plus if the decision was made to go with stainless hinges it would not work so well. The alternative was to build out the body with fiberglass. This was done by roughing the gel coat in the area of the hinge and applying a layer of resin. After that hardened (and it does get hard) sanding and filing it down to a satisfactory straightness would be labor intensive. So being a machinist, my mind

gravitated towards milling it. Well since I can't mount the body into a milling machine. I decided to bring the milling machine to the body in the form of a hand held router. A piece of plywood was cut with an access hole a bit bigger than the area to be cut, then clamped to the body. A straight edge was then fastened to the plywood as a guide to slide the router against. The hinges were fastened to the windshield and a measurement was taken between the two sides then transferred to the cowl. 1/16" had to come off each side. The router was set to that depth plus the thickness of the plywood, and strapping on a mask the cut was made. Surprisingly

the material came off in chips rather than a more harmful dust. The whole rig was transferred to the other side and repeated. We ended up with perfectly flat mounting surfaces the correct width for the hinges. The windshield frame was test fitted with no side movement. Plus it saved ware and tear on this aging body.