Footwell Panels final fix

The continuing cold weather makes evening opportunities to work on the car limited, so time and progress has been slightly hampered this past week, that aside I managed to get in to the garage and make further progress with the footwell panels.

One thing I have discovered in the fitment of the panels is you need a ready supply of 3.2mm drill bits! clearly I am still learning the knack for drilling the chassis but what I have established is:

• You need a good centre punch to give the drill bit a chance to bite into the steel otherwise it will wander across the powdercoat, plus,
• You need low revs on the drill, high revs and the drill bit will blunt making the job hard nigh on impossible

So with that thought process in mind, I managed to drill into the chassis frame using the panel initially as a guide to mark the holes in the frame which I then centre punched and followed up with steady low rev drilling. Cleco'd the panel as I progressed to ensure it all remained square and true in the chassis.

Once drilled, everything was cleaned with white spirit, the laser protective film removed and time to crack open the black polyurethane sealant

The sealant.... you need disposable gloves without question, get it on your hands and if not removed immediately with white spirit it will stain your skin and however much scrubbing you do after it will remain ingrained for days after. The sealant is also extremely sticky, it grabs the steel virtually immediately but you do have some time to maneuvere into final position.

I elected to run a thick bead down the middle of each side over the drilled holes in the chassis. Inserted the rivet and gunned the rivet in cleaning excess sealant up with a white spirit soaked cloth.

I need to follow up with sealing the inside of the footwells once it they have fully dried to make it all water tight.