Modern-day Miura

[Fargoman]

Why not machine up an entirely new shift plate with he correct bolt pattern and do away with eh adaptor plate.

This would also give you the opportunity to reduce the shift plate height if possible.

You've done much harder machining to get it to this point so may as well go the whole 9 yards!

[dwmh]

Congratulations on MSOTM Joel, you're not afraid of a challenge.

[Antoine_P]

Congrats for the MSOTM, well deserved ! Please keep sharing this amazing project with us !

Cheers

Antoine

[cliffrod]

Congratulation on MSOTM, Joel. Very cool & Much deserved. I'm learning a lot from your posts and progress. Thank you.

[Dantheman84]

Well done on MSOTM mate, your progress has been inspiring to watch!

[123pugsy]

Well deserved Joel. You have great patience with really nice results in making these parts.

[heinke]

Wow, MSOTM, what an honor, I didn’t expect it at all. I guess that maybe some of the metal shaping knowledge and skills from this forum has rubbed off along the way. Thanks to all those who’ve shared as I feel like I’ve greatly benefited and want to give back.

Ok, back to the Miura project. I decided the rear part of the door frame was the next logical step in building out the doors. Once completed, I’ll have both the front and rear portions in place for the long bottom edge to attach to. Given I’m making up the door frame shapes as I go along because they are a blend of those from Miura and C4 Corvette, I need to have a good “visual” formed in my brain before I can proceed. The door frames have a channel for the weather seals on the inside edge, I only had just enough aluminum sheet bent up with this channel on hand and so there wasn’t room for error without another trip back to the sheet metal shop. While the shaped seemed like it should be fairly straight forward, the mental image wasn’t forth coming. So cardboard mockup time it is.



And then to slicing up and shaping some metal. I chose to slice the sheet in the middle of the weather seal channel to minimize the weld area on the edge and thus keep the edge nice and clean. The door alignment pin required a lot of shaping to accommodate.



Add in a scalloped filler piece and tack up.



One of a dozen or so trial fits along the way to identify what adjustments were required.



I needed to work to the door shape so I pulled a template from the station buck and marked it out.



The forward facing bulge at the top needed to be smoothed out and the portion underneath it shrunk to move it forward.



After some work on the power hammer, it’s looking much better. I think more shaping is needed to smooth it out but I don't have a good enough target yet to know when I've done enough shaping.



And some metal finishing on the welds.



I think I’m going to jump over and repeat the process on the drivers side while it’s fresh in my mind. I think the next step in finishing up this panel is to nail down the positioning and curvature for the rear part of the door opening/jamb before turning a flange on the door frame to hold the skin. One thing leads to another, then another and so on…

[Gojeep]

Much deserved on the MSOTM mate.

You are having to deal with some very complex shapes there!

[heinke]

Originally Posted by Fargoman

Why not machine up an entirely new shift plate with he correct bolt pattern and do away with eh adaptor plate.

This would also give you the opportunity to reduce the shift plate height if possible.

You've done much harder machining to get it to this point so may as well go the whole 9 yards!

Yes, it might be best to machine up a new shift plate from a chunk of aluminum billet. Right now I'm waiting to get the correct shift forks and rails from my transmission guy so I can get some actual measurements to figure out best path forward. In other words, I need to right transmission internal parts in place to figure out what external parts will be best.

[metalmarks]

Congratulations! I'm enjoying all your progress!