Bodywork Progress

With all the bodywork now sprayed up and transported back home it was time for a trial fit!!

The stripes had be masked out off the car, so we were a bit concerned they wouldn't match up once back on the car. As it turns out its only the drivers side, side stripe that doesn't quite line up, so a quick airbrush in will be required.

I had trimmed the the middle tub to fit the rear but hadn't actually sorted out the fixings before spraying. To keep things simple i pop riveted 2 pieces of angle onto the rear tub and then dzus fastners hold the sides to these. The drivers side went ok, but passenger side required 3 attempts as the curvature of the panels didn't quite match and looked horrible. I have had to position the fixings to as to bend the side panels into more of a curve to match the rear.

Another thing i noticed is that the drivers side rear body work seemed to be sitting sligtly higher than the passengers, so redrilled and moved the bonnet pins to try and level it up. But from doing this exercise i am now aware how non symmetrical the body panels are!! It is impossible to get everything mirrored exactly due to the body mouldings being different shapes either side!! My job is BIW design and everything is nicely mirrored in CAD, meaning that you can make everything nice and symmetrical, so I find these errors very annoying, but have to accept its all part of the kit car and hand built nature of these cars!!

With the body now fitted, it was time to bolt all the nice shiney bit back on!! This is very satisfying, especially doing it on the lawn in the nice sunshine

Wheelarch extensions now fully fitted and trimmed. The edges are lethal, hopefully Tim can catch his leg on them as he walks past and we can have matching scars inflicted from each others cars! ;-)  I have some rubber edging to glue on after this has been achieved!

The lights are being mounted to the chassis rather than the bodywork, so made up some mounting plates and strengthened them by bending the edges and creating a box. I have got to mount these in mid air of the chassi to line up with the holes in the rear body work.