e30ernest wrote:In fairness, it doesn't appear that that hole is part of the main bulkhead. It appears to be just on top of it.
Some semantics need to be agreed upon.
The photo clearly high lights the pre-assembled shape of the front bulkhead subassembly. We can see a number of bond lines. It would be my claim that once the subassembly is bonded to the nose of the chassis the front bulkhead actually grows is size to be represented by all of the forward facing surfaces. At a minimum the bulkhead sub-assembly could have been made taller and thus stronger if there was no slot.
I would also say that they are still using last years chassis lay-up or design. The 'letter box' front bulkhead subassembly was simply made shorter to form the letterbox slot. They could of just machined the top off the old front bulkhead subassembly and accepted the reduced strength. Oddly they used a spacer block, inside the red circle, to makeup for the difference in height.
Brian