Upper/lower mouth fit

I am in the process of completely dissembling my bonnet. Lots of bondo was used to cover accident damage. It appears to have been assembled from old and new parts.
The lower mouth section is new and undamaged, it’s the nicest part on the entire bonnet.
I find the center section (upper) mouth is wider than the lower mouth by about 3/4-1 inch. Its possible all the accident and past hammering on the upper section has widened it
I note that this transition is hidden behind the chrome center bar and front bumpers.
Is there a problem here? Do I need to finesses the upper center section narrower?

Good use of sacrificial remodel carpet…

I recently replaced my lower valance during my restoration and found about 3/4 difference from the rest of the bonnet. I ended up doing a little creative cutting and welding. Unfortunatly replacement parts are clearly not identical parts.

I suggest you will need to get the two pieces fitting together well, Bill, if the aesthetic is going to be right. A bigger challenge will be finessing the headlight openings so that the buckets fit flush. First thing you need to do, though, is build a bonnet cradle like this one

It will make your life much easier for reshaping and assembly.

I would also recommend you continue to strip down the bonnet of all paint and get it down to bare, shiny metal top and bottom before working the steel. If you haven’t already done so, get yourself a good bumping kit - Eastwood’s sells a decent one for a good price - a 6000 rpm body grinder and a shrinking disc. There’s only so much you can do to shrink steel with a torch.

Keep going! you’re doing great.

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Was your lower valance narrower or wider?

The new lower valance was wider.

I replaced the lower valance with a new one and also found it was wider.

Here is the before picture. The old center section was already in need of repair so I just pushed it out to match.