Plastic Surgery

During dads prep of the body he had filled all of the holes i had made for mounting the body, so after a bit of redrilling i got the back end inplace and set about fitting the aluminium closing panels i had made

I was worried these would be a bit flimsy, but now they are rivetted in place they are fine, and also help the loading/fitting of rear body as the return edges on help line up the wheel arch inners.

As i mentioned in my previous post the wheels stick out by about 60mm from the body work, so i need to address this with some wheelarch spatts. Making the off side one has pointed to something being different between the mouldings of the original spider type tub and the door type tub i now have. I am assuming the spider tub must have more flared wheel arches or they were modified, as the wheels never stuck out this far before and the spats were a lot smaller. Now the rules state that class C should be standard body work, which this obviously isn't, but i need to enclose the wheel so they will have to be fitted, or revert to a spider tub. I haven't got time to do anything else, and seeing that most other furys have extended arches (see Bobs car) i can't see why it would be a problem.

To make the spatts/extensions i bent a strip of aluminium in to a curve to match the wheel arch, lined it up on the outside edge and scribed the outline of the bodywork the aluminium. I then cut up to this line on the inside edge every 30mm so that i could bend the tabs inside the car and then pop riveted it through the body.

Dad had also been busy prepping up the front end ready to mask out the stripe. The tricky part of the stripe is where it passes over the bumps, and at the same time keep the line straight and an equal width. To do this, rather than just trying to get the edging tape to look straight by eye, we stood the bonnet up on its rear edge, and ran a laser from a parallel piece of wood in front of it and marked the line ever few centimetres. This worked a treat and line has come out looking very neat. Unfortunately the hole for the air intake isn't central so is offset compared to the stripe, but hey ho, i'll probably destroy the bonnet next time out anyway ;-)

The Brand new lights took a bit of a battering last time out, and at £35 per corner i was happy just to bodge them back in. But Dad wasn't happy with this, and to be fair the rest of the car looks so good they would ruin it, so he took it upon himself and surprised me by making these out of a stainless  steel dog bowl and a cheap large torch!!! The bulbs in the torch have been replaced with proper headlight bulbs and a side light added. OK, these wouldn't pass an MOT as stated due to the beam pattern, but they still have the side, dip and main beam required, and more importantly cost about £3 and are extremely lightweight. So next time Colin destroys one i won't be that bothered about running round the marshals trying to find who picked it up and hoping it is still in 1 piece ;-)

So i've still got plenty to do, but from one of the ugliest, scruffiest looking cars on the grid a beautiful white, blue and red swan is emerging!! No doubt I will ensure it returns to the dog like looks within 30 seconds of driving it!!!!!