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Daytona Coupe, 289 and 427 Cobras
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Daytona Coupe Cobra -
Parts on the Buck
After the chassis and buck fabrication came the hard part; shaping the body panels. The panels were hand formed on an English wheel and with a mallet and sandbag. The body is made of aluminum as were the original cars. The material used is 3003 H14 in a heavier gauge (.060 inch for a little better resistance to shopping carts and easier fabrication.) The bulk of the body panels are gas welded with oxyacetylene, although a few were joined with the TIG process.
The body was fabricated from numerous smaller pieces for ease of forming. After shaping to the desired form, these smaller pieces were laid out on the buck, clamped down and trimmed to fit tightly to the adjacent piece. The front end of the coupe utilized over 18 smaller pieces for the major structure (not counting another 8 - 10 pieces for the headlight buckets, air ducts, etc.) Depending on the location of the part the adjacent pieces were either tack welded together on the buck or scribed with witness lines and removed from the buck for tacking. The following photos shows this process around the left front headlight and the right front fender areas.
