Bonnet pins installed, temporary exhaust started.

It was too hot inside the house to have any excuse to not make progress on the E21 tonight, so I decided I’d knock one of the relatively easy tasks off the list; installing the bonnet pins. Pretty simple really, you drill a couple of holes for the pins, enlarge the ones in the bonnet so the top can sit flush, and then install the nuts on them tight so they are held in place.

I chose to use the top of the quarter panels to hold them as these are much sturdier than the section of radiator support attached to them (because of the removal/modification I have done)

Like these bonnet pins? Here's where I got them from

Next, I started to fit up a temporary exhaust (eventually I will have to make a call on re-using the extractors from my EB, or building new ones from scratch) using a factory cast iron two piece falcon manifold. These were used in the same design all the way through from EA series one to AU series 3! Unfortunately, the exit points straight at the steering arm, so I’ve got to do some tricky pipework to step around it. Not ideal for a temporary solution, but hey – it’s all practice cutting/welding various materials!

Another angle of how it’s aiming right at the steering:

I’ve made this up so far, this steps it easily away from the steering arm so now I’ll just need to start cutting/rotating/welding etc until I get something that works. I would have done more tonight except I’d sat my welding mask solar panel down and the battery was flat. My poor eyes discovered the hard way what it feels like to get welding flash. Thankfully the helmet still has SOME degree of shading when it’s not switched, and I was able to at least get this one piece done. The flange is freely rotatable, so I can get it just-right as I go.