Things have been really slow on the car front for the past week or so since I picked up the bodywork from MAC#1. In fact, other than trial fitting and testing the headlights, I have not touched the car all week.
This may be due to visiting the Stoneleigh kit car show this weekend or maybe it is because I am off to Africa (again) next week but I think the real reason was that I was reluctant to start the bodywork!
I have been waiting for it for so long, now that it is finally here, I felt a little daunted by fitting it. There are still only two areas of the car that I have done so far that will be visible on the final build (rear panel and dashboard) and I made a bit of a hash of both so I guess I was a little worried about doing something so visible on the car. But last night, I decided to take the bull by the horns and get started on fitting the first part of the body, the side panels.
The side panel come as a overlong section that will eventually nee trimming both ends. The side panel will be bonded to the car using glue and then riveted along the bottom and along the top along the door apertures only (not that there is a door). You also need to cut away a section at the front end of the panel to allow the upper coil-over and wishbone to pass through it. You also need to cut four large holes to allow the rest of the wishbones and the steering rack to pass through.
The fist thing I did was offer up the panel and move it in to the final position.
The arch of the back wants to be slightly forward of the raise in the chassis in the rear and the crease in the panel wants to line up roughly with the crease in the chassis but it does not need to be mm accurate (I hope).
Once I was happy, I clamped it in place and then put a bit of insulation tape over both the panel and chassis (in a couple of places) and then used a knife to cut the tape so that some was left on the chassis and some on the panel. That way, when I take the panel off and put it back on again, I line up the tape and it is in the same place. When I come to do the opposite panel, I will measure the position of the tape on the first and set it up the same.
With the panel in place on the car, I offered up the template that MAC#1 gave me to mark where I needed to cut the end of the panel and drill out the big holes.
Unfortunately, I think the template must of been for another car because it did not match up in the slightest. Good job I checked! But this did mean that I would need to make my own template.
This is hard because the panel can not be positioned in to the right place until the top of the end is trimmed as the light bracket is in the way. But you don’t know where to cut without a template, so I had to use a certain a combination of measuring and judgement.
It turned out that the back of the template supplied by MAC#1 had a good picture on it.
After carefully making my new template, I offered it up, and it was also completely wrong!
So I had to start on the third template of the night.
This one appeared to be a lot better so I decided it would be good enough and started to mark it out on the actual side panel.
First I put masking tape on the panel, then taped the template in place.
Once it was marked out, it was time for the really scary bit. Take a jigsaw and drill to my nice side panels.
I used a jigsaw fitted with a fibreglass cutting blade to cut the straight edges but the cut was not that clean and will need some attention later but I discovered that the band sander attachment on the Dremel did a great job of tidying the edge and making it look good.
Next I used a 74m hole cutter bit for my drill to cut out the actual holes in for the wishbones.
The end result was OK. I have not sanded it all at this stage but overall it did not look too bad.
Once tip I would pass on it use several layers of masking so that the jigsaw does not scratch the panel as you push it along.
So the final this to do was to offer it up to the chassis and see if the holes are in the right place.
The good news is that they largely were perfect except for one. The left upper wishbone hole will need slight enlarging but the rest were just about dead centre, so I can live with that. When I do the other side, I just need to move that hole over by 5mm but I am sure that the needed enlargement on this side will not be noticeable and I will use the Dremel to do it so it should be fairly smooth.
So the first stage of fitting the first panel is complete. I am really happy with the way it looks and now have the confidence to push forward and fit the other panels.
One final thing I noticed while doing all this. I have been using pictures from a car build by a guy called Richard for reference throughout my build. Typically, I will look at his car in a picture and hopefully be able to get some idea as to what I need to do.
I know that Richard’s car has a special modified set of coil-overs that are fitted upside down (for technical reasons I don’t really understand).
Now I fitted my rear suspension way back before Xmas and the coil-overs have been on the car ever since. But in all that time, I have never noticed that I fitted them upside down (following pictures on Rich’s car). You would think the writing being upside down would have made me think about it!
So these will need re-fitting correctly some time in the near future.
Next time I need to tackle the rear end of the panel.
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