Is it cut twice, measure never or measure twice, cut once?

I always get those two confused…

Since finishing up the fender extensions (never say finished, I am tweaking them. more on that later…) I decided to pull the headlight bezels and grill off in anticipation of installing the headlight mounts.

Since I was already there, I decided to pull of the front bumper again to finishing pounding the mounts all the way back to give me the inch and half needed.

The fun part of building a Frankenstein car is trying to get parts to work with each other that were never meant to work together originally.

The ’76 Royal fenders have a gusset that connects to the core support.

While it complicates the install, definitely not a deal breaker. With my handy dandy rotary tool I’ll just cut some steel!

I’ll save the boring details and just post a bunch of pictures!

15 year old Craftsman rotary tool with flex shaft and cutting disc.

Fortunately the holes on the inner support remain, allowing me to approximate position of headlight mounts.

Markings were used only for “guidelines”.

Cool thing about being a teenager in the early ’90s is that you end up growing into those over sized baggy clothes that were in style…

After I finished cutting and bolting the mount, everything felt secure and solid! Which is nice!

The drivers side went extremely smooth. The passenger side not so much. As soon as I started cutting, the flex shaft broke. This really sucked. It was 15 years old and a trusted companion. They just don’t make tools that last ;).

I was able to get the cuts done for the most part with the Craftsman rotary tool, but not very clean or close to where I needed them to end. I ended up going out Sunday afternoon to Walmart to pickup a new Dremel. I really didn’t want to buy it. I hated spending the money.

But it is a really awesome tool! My Craftsman tool is really large, and heavy. This is so small and light, but of course I like having the option of having a flex shaft attachment, so I have to order one of those!