have a look

Before any welding can really start I need to clean up the parts involved especially the front wings as there is a pressing on the originals which has to be transferred to the new nose cones. I don't think they are commonly as rusted as mine which are barley savable but will be good enough to use as the basis for transfer to the nose cones.

A sand blaster is ideal for these areas as there is so much muck etc on them which would be hard to reach with wire brushes etc and the wings are too large to dip in a chemical rust stripper but I have dipped the lower valances in this type of thing.

one day in chemical rust stripper brought up rusted outer surface of 1/4 valance pretty clean

forward mounting flage with captive nuts has all but vanished

after a day in the liquid you can see it brings metal up pretty bright and also loosened the thin original coat of black paint

which wiped off to leave pretty clean metal

front face of headlamp area cleaned up with sand blasting to see what can be salvaged for transferring to new nose cone

rear of same area showing corroded pressing

not possible to remove indicator in situ as small screws covered in rust

after blasting remaining screws and remnants of headlamp shell came away easily

there are spot welds here somewhere which need to be drilled out to free up the headlight retaining/air vent funnel pressings

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So that's what I achieved today. The 1/4 valances should clean up ok in the dipping tub and I'll do a bit more blasting on the wings. I started on the other wing tonight also but no pics of that. The only difference here was that the headlamp bowl was still in that wing and its not quite so corroded so ther are more reference points for repairing the pressing.