34. Front inner mudguards

Before I put back the flip front on the car I decided to make the inner mudguard sheets new. The old parts were made from alu - but they did not fit really good.

... and you know, why to clean the old parts if you can make them new...

Another - important - reason to make new ones is, that I want to guide the air, which enters the engine bay through the radiator:
--> around the engine
--> over the exaust manifolds
--> through the transmission tunnel
under the car.
At the moment the air enters the engine bay through the cooler and hides between the cooler and the engine under the car.
A little bit of the air will leave the engine bay through the ventilation openings in the hood - OK.

Let´s start to constuct a "hermetically seald" engine bay...

I used cardboard to make stencils for each part before I cut it out from a 1mm alu sheet. It was like a puzzle to close all the openings behind the wheels.

One sheet is still missing... as well as the hole for the water hose.

After it was done I have to take care for that big gap between the radiator and the enigne.

I followed the bottom line of the radiator - hopefully the flip front will fit anyway...
The little 45° flap at the rear end shall protect the pulley against water and dirt.

Here you see another sheet closing the gap between the pulley and the frame. I want to guide the air around the exaust manifolds and this hohle was too big...

Here are the new sheets:

I do not know, how to coat them to protect them before water and salt ? If I do nothing, they will look look dirty really soon.
I thought about anodise the sheets, but I do not know the type of alu - definitly I used two different typs of material - and I do not know how good you can anodise them. the biggest issue here is the big surface of the single parts - you need big buckets for caustic soda, sulphuric acid and boiling water.
Maybe powder coating or just painting them is OK as well.