Inner crescent panels

Two inner crescent panels are next to be fitted to the chassis and I have to say I am surprised these are not part of the starter kit which I anticipated would have had all the panels necessary to enable a full construction of the chassis.

Not sure of the logic in not including these with the starter kit apart from it providing the option to the builder of not fitting these for weight saving, personal aesthetic reasons...anyway panels sourced from GBS and ready to fit into the chassis.

Process follows previous description for panel fitting so I wont go into great line by line detail here, selective riveting on the square tubed panel and cleco'd into position as holes drilled to take rivets when finally sealed and fixed into position.

Drivers Side Panel & Rear Seat Panel final fit

Natural progression from the rear seat panel is to get the driver side transmission tunnel panel into position.

For now I am leaving the passenger side to allow access for fitting the drive shaft later in the build.

So, back to the drivers side and it generally fits well, it needed some slight bending towards the footwell end as it follows the chassis frame plus at the end, the panel needs to bend in towards the driver side footwell panel.

Once the bends have been put, I again mark up from the inside (drive shaft side) where the frame runs, removed from the chassis applied masking tape to replicate the chassis frame. Holes were drilled for the rivets and the panel re-fit and held in place using some clecos to get fixed firmly in position whilst I drilled out the holes into the chassis frame. Debur and we are good to go with final fit, rivet etc.

Prior to applying the polyurethane sealant, I peeled off the protective film and cleaned the panels/ chassis frame.

Started with the back panel, I applied plenty of the black ultra sticky adhesive sealant, re-fitted the back panel, riveted, clamped and fixed firmly into position wiping away excess sealant whilst being constantly wary of not getting it onto the skin for a prolonged period as its horrendous to get off once engrained onto the skin!

I followed up the rear panel by doing the same process with the driver side panel.

All fixed into position and left to harden over the next 24 hours

Beginning to look more like a chassis now some panels are getting fitted!

Even jensen approves!

Back Seat Panel

Time for some more paneling!

Now I have got alot of the services (brake lines, fuel lines, main loom etc) running through the chassis, its coming to the point where I should start getting some of the panels fixed into position.

Back Seat Panel a nice one to get fixed in... Perhaps it was late in the day or the brain was not functioning fully, however I have to admit I spent best part of half an hour working out how this panel actually fits into position.

The solution as always was obvious once I had expelled some frustration in wondering how and why it was not fitting into position. Simple - bend the panel from the middle concave shape, pop the sides into their position on the chassis release the bend. In it goes - as I said simple!

Next need to mark where the panel will be riveted. Its not a load bearing panel so not a huge number of rivets will be required to secure, the polyurethane sealant will be a strong enough bonding agent also.

Easiest way to mark out for drilling, get a black marker pen and scribe from the rear along the chassis frames where rivets will go. remove the panel from the chassis once scribe'd and mark equal spaced rivet holes onto masking tape - following picture shows that after marking up with the pen and masking tape.

3.2mm drill bit for the rivets, some cleco fasteners to assist holding into position whilst further holes were drilled and its all good to go with the sealant and final rivet once the protective film has been removed

More Panelling

Back to some more panelling and I turned to the passenger footwell panel and decided to get that marked up, drilled, deburred and folded ready for fitting to the chassis.

the basics of the panel prep are covered elsewhere in the blog so I won't go over old ground suffice to say, some minor trimming is need to fit around weld points on the chassis frame but its now ready for centre punching the chassis and drilling the chassis before the black gunk comes out to fix into position and rivet (along with the drivers side footwell panel)

Front tunnel panel

So, footwell panels in and ready for sealing watertight I moved onto the drivers side front tunnel panel, one of the few panels which actually needs a slight fold inwards.

Clearly the builder has the discretion to fit this panel either on the inside of the footwell or on the outside transmission tunnel side to provide some more space for feet which considering there is a clutch and brake pedal making it tight for the driver, locating on the outside is a no-brainer which thus creates the need for a fold to be made along the edge.

So same process as for footwell in terms of fitment to the chassis. Once all holes were drilled into the panel and deburred I offered it up to the frame and decided to evolve the chassis drilling part further from the method I adopted with the footwell panels. 

This time I marked up masking tape on the chassis frame, put a pen through the holes in the panel and marked the tape. Centre punched the pen marks, took a pilot drill and drilled through the pen marks and followed up with the 3.2mm drill bit. verdict...An improvement on the footwell drilling process but still not 100% happy however I feel this technique is better.

Next I looked at putting the fold into the edge of this panel to turn it in towards the inside of drivers cockpit. Relatively easy bit this, find some long wood, fix into vice along with the panel and ease the panel over the wood. A few test fits and further bends and the fold is in and the panel is ready for final fit once all the laser protective film is removed.

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.

Footwell panels

One of my early tasks is to get the brake lines, fuel pipes and wiring loom fixed into the chassis before all the panels start to be fitted as once they go in access will begin to reduce. That aside the footwell panels are some which can be fitted early on with little impact on future tasks plus on reflection they need to go in early as front brake lines will be fixed into position on the top edges of these panels.

As a confidence builder they are on the face of it straight forward to fit!

A lot of the panels are already pre-cut to size and shape however the first challenge I found was actually getting the footwell panels into position - a little Chinese puzzle to tease me

for future reference the best way to get these panels into position is through the sides of the chassis frame placing the bottom left corner of each panel into its final position and hinging the whole panel round and into situ (I hope that makes sense and yes it did take me a good ten minutes to realise that was the obvious way to do it!).

You will need to do some filing of edges and corners to get a better fit since being laser cut they don't take account of weld lines on the chassis which protrude - however there should not be too much filing to worry about and overall they fitted well.

Basic process I adopted:

1. file panel and dry fit into position 
2. using masking tape mark out around the edges of the panel the chassis frame
3. find the middle of the tape and equally space holes for drilling
4. drill through with 3.2mm titanium drill
5. Debur the reverse side with a countersunk drill bit
6. Offer panel up and clamp ready for Cleco pins, further drilling, final glue and rivet

So Polyurethane Sealant and Cleco kit on order, the final fixing into position beckons...