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Thanks to Mike Dulinski for transporting the missing Jackard fender I needed from Ross's place in Maryland to me here in Chicagoland.





Mike was on his way back to Minnesota after a stop picking up his new to him 1956 Caribbean from an estate in Pennsylvania.

Nice! I’m really glad to hear you found the fender you needed. You’ve been making some great progress on you car. As usual, your blog continues to help me tremendously. I have work being done on my car, and starting with steering and suspension. Your blog recently had a discussion about upper bumpers from Rock Auto… That saved me a bundle compared to Steele Rubber.

This morning started with replacing all the front end grease fittings and lubing the everything.







Next I moved on to throwing the rear fender just to get it off the floor and have a place for it to go.





The I used body mount and a washer to use as the spacer for the radiator mount. Not sure if this is going to be too thick or thin. I guess I'll find when I go to hang the fenders and hood.

Got the radiator back onto the car.




Now I can get the engine running again and make sure everything is still good after having everything part. I still need to bleed the front brakes after having them apart.

The rubber under my radiator mount is about 3/8 or a little less,and I'm pretty certain it has settled some. It's looks like it was probably about 1/2" to begin with. Hood & fender alignment is pretty good regardless, and the hood doesn't shake on a rough dirt road.

This is what I came up with:





All togethwr its probably about 1/2". When I took the car apart, there was just a 1/16" piece of sheet rubber there.

Kevin, I was thinking one could cut slots in the rubber mount and washers to allow for changing mount or adding/subtracting shims to get proper radiator grille alignment. Just a thought. Enjoying very much your postings on the 115C. Merry Christmas.

Cleaning and painting the front fender supports and the front "cow catcher".





Once I can get the fender support back on, then I am going to try to test fit all the front sheet metal to see what adjustments I need to make to the position of the radiator/support.

Once I get that pretty dialed in and the radiator locked in place the I'll pull then sheet metal back off to finish the engine bay stuff. Pretty hard to get radiator hoses on and off with the grill shell on. Also I still need to mount the new grille in the shell.

So I'll be cleaning up the front sheet metal enough to make it look presentable in its patina form. Real paint and body work will not happen until the end of 2024.

Got the fender supports back on and then started to get all the front sheet metal on.





I left the radiator core to frame mounting bolt loose, so it could float as all the other pieces were bolted on.

I think it's coming out fairly decent.





The front fender still need repair work as one is missing the tab for the radiator fender support. Also both had the flange area where the lower frame brace attaches with two bolts rotted away. And then needed some general straightening along the bottom edges.

But this was good enough to see if the radiator mount spacer was going to work.

Also I need to do some repair work along the bottom edge of the cowl as one side has a 2x2 piece of metal missing where the top fender to cowl bolt goes. Also there are a couple of cage nuts missing.

That looks like it's lining up pretty well. Did you get the other side on? That's where I started to run into problems on my dad's.

-Kevin

Yes the other side is not as great as the height is off as the mounting tab for radiator fender support on that side was missing. So it's pretty much just sitting on the support. But if I lift it to where it would be. It's pretty much the same as the other side.

Most of metal repair that is needed is on the passenger side fender and cowl area where it mounts. The passenger side iin general was for sure the side that was facing the weather when it was parked outside under a porch for many years.