Body Fitting Part 2

A lot of work in this post, securing the body down to last forever more is pretty stressful.

Once the body was in the correct position we jiggled the body about a bit with plumb lines from 12 o'clock in the wheel arches to get left/right alignment correct, then deployed lots of clamps to hold it in place. Then mega-drilling commenced on the floor. Quite awkward drilling right in the footwells. Couldnt get the drill straight through the chassis becuase of the shape of the top of the footwell so we just drilled through the fibreglass to leave a mark on the chassis to drill out later.

We lifted the body off to clear all the swarf away and started applying the Wurth adhesive like it was going out of fashion. One interesting point at the rear end the manual suggests a pretty convoluted way of getting a line of holes drilled into the extreme rear cross member. Our solution was to dremel two slots in the boot floor at either end so we could see where the bar was, then draw a line down its centre and get drilling. All holes were spot on the centre of the round bar.

The body went straight back on and line it up on the drilled holes, not too difficult. I bought an air riveter of ebay and I can honestly say that without it we would have been completely stuffed as these are pretty meaty rivets. Heres Sam doing some lazy mans riveting.

At this point we hadnt put any adhesive around the engine bay and it was a good job as it was getting dark We judged that the inner wings were flexible enough to apply adhesive and rivet at our leisure the next day as we were tired and hungry and didnt want to encourage any mistakes.

Below - first the passenger  side inner wing on the front horn. Job well done, good fit. The fibreglass is bendy enough for this to meet the chassis snugly and was rock solid with a metal spreader plate on the outside, a good dollop of adhesive and neatly tidied with a good fillet of wurth around the edge.

The drivers side was not as good - There wasnt enough flex to make up the gap and have a nice flat face of the fibreglass wing against the chassis rail, giving a vastly reduced area for the adhesive. The solution here was to make a half inch thick spacer plate bonded and riveted to the chassis, these rivets interspaced between the rivets that would eventually go through the exterior spreader, fibreglass, spacer plate and chassis. This required a quick trip into town to get some longer rivets. All faces were copiously covered in wurth adhesive.

Eventually though all was well. The spacer plate was covered by a large fillet of adhesive to neaten it up The insides of the wheel arches currently have the metal spreader plates visible which to be honest look like a bit of a bodge but all this area will be covered in 5mm thick neoprene rubber to stop stones cracking the body. 

For now though its quite satisfying to look at the mass of rivets, although after getting some of the wurth stuff on my hands I know the adhesive is doing most of the work in stopping the body blowing off in the breeze.

Body Fitting Part 1

We drafted in friends Max and Chris to help finish the slightly messy assembly of the rear end, driveshafts and CV joints which took most of the day at a steady methodical pace but passed without massive incident, apart from having to adjust the rear caliper carriers as the wheels were catching. We ended up griding away the slave wheels in frustration which solved the problem.

When it came to it, 3 people was enough to fit the body. One at the front and one each on the rear wheel arches. Bit of effort required for the two at the back to get it chest high but it dropped straight on. Pushed the footwells up against the plates in the chassis to ensure fore/aft alignment was correct then stepped back to admire our handiwork. The difficult bit will be tomorrow when we start drilling and riveting but for now we basked in the glory.

Alignment Finishing

Tried to attempt assembly of handbrake, discs and caliper carriers but first decided to have a last check of the toe, and borrowed a digital inclinometer from work to check camber (although its non-adjustable).

The reason for this is that although in the manual it says to set the toe/alignment off the upper forward mounting lug and then measure the space in the other 2 lugs and fill appropriately, if you were to be ±1 shim in the lower forward lug and then did up the nut effin tight you could inadvertently alter the toe and potentially the camber depending how bendy everything is.

Due to dissasembly for messing around with driveshafts, then reassemby, the aligment measurement for the rhs was out by 3mm at the front of the car which is near as damn it one thin shim (0.15mm). Maybe I wasnt quite so brutal in doing up the nut as before but anyways we were getting sick of the iterative measure-adjust-remeasure process and the manual says within 2mm either side is good enough.

With all shim packs inserted and everything done up good and tight, my toe readings were 0.5mm greater at the rear of the setup bars, giving very slight toe in, and 1mm difference at the front although the width of the laser at that distance gave another 1mm potential error margin so we reckon it was as good as it could be. Out of interest the camber measurement was -0.2° and -0.1° driver and passenger side respectively. Probably not going to get much better than that and the target is 0°.

This meant that the handbrake components could go on, followed by discs.

Finishing off the rear end

Friday/Saturday saw the rear end almost finished apart from driveshafts. Shim packs were put in the remaining mounting positions for the rear hubs, the lower mouting hole drilled through and the outer face required some filing to get the taper washer to fit (thanks Shaun!). Re-measured the alignment all fully bolted up and it was still correct so that was a relief.

Couldnt find the driveshaft circlips so wasnt able to fit the driveshafts but did a trial fitting and got a bit confused by the fact that they seemed a bit short:

Asked on the good old forum and the CV joint there isnt fully extended and spacer rings are available to fill in the gap so I'll get those ordered. Did a test fitting of the handbrake backing plates so when the driveshaft components come I can fit everything in one go before putting the body on next weekend.

Also got a bit more tedious drilling/tapping done to secure the fore/aft brake line and battery cable which barely seems long enough but as I'm going to an isolator switch I've realised that I dont need to use the dax cable anyway, I'm going to have to re-crimp terminals eventually so wasted some £ there from poor planning.

Took the opportunity for a photo with Shaun who came round for a couple of days to help out, and Naomi too, who got away with some light gardening this weekend but has some mega drilling/tapping and riveting to do in the coming week.