MadaboutKitcars

Superb work!
Dont fancy taking a mould off of that area do you, for those who have the inclination but not the skills!

Thank you ...How much would you mould ? at some point you need to join it into the standard kit ...I wouldn't want to start moulding one of Chris's kits . But Chris has been known to deviate , perhaps have a chat with him ?

I worked out the filler tube today , no pics as its all apart again to be welded and bracketry added etc.. but it basically comes from the original filler and back on itself through the panel next to the filler at about the 10 o'clock position ...this puts a piece of 2'' stainless pipe sticking into the rear shelf area next to the rollbar... it travels through the rear boot panel into the boot area ....it will be a slow fill but its a constant run ...

I'm on holiday so won't be able to do any work for a few weeks but I had intended to make the fuel filler pipe out of 2" plastic plumbing pipe from B&Q to make the template, much easier to chop and change than metal. Lots of pre formed metal bends available on EBay for very little money and will probably join them with rubber pipe to connect them together.

Great work there. It does look a lot better in that position although its a lot of work, i think its worth it.

BIT MORE DONE TODAY .....I have still got to put the fuel delivery pipe together , I decided to have my 'twisted U - section' tig welded as I don't want any issues with it and I ran out of time to collect from my mate this afternoon ..I'm going to pick it up first thing in the morning , so first job will be fit up the pipes and hoses , before disconnecting it all again as the roof still needs to come on and off a few times ..

Today I managed to make a start on boot guttering , very simple with B & Q ally sections bent to shape around the aperture and sikkoflexed in place with fixing bolts as well ...next time the bodies off , I will fibreglass the rear as well , in a similar fashion to the front. I need to fit a small drain pipe next to the fuel cap in the gutter to deal with a potential build up area there ..but its nearly done ..



I also made a start on the door / cill mods.
I am virtually copying Jeff H's technique for this and Jeff very kindly had the cill sections bent up for me using the same dimensions as before ...basically 30mm rise by 120mm deep.
I cut 40mm of the door bottom giving us a 10mm gap for wriggle room / bogging up etc..this will be reduced down to about 5mm when the car is prepped .. The door bottoms were re-instated back on the door , I tucked the lower section inside tthe top and welded around the perimeter forming 2 new ends to tie it in ...the following pic shows first cut , untrimmed and rear corner not radiused ...



I then started to fit Jeff's cill panels ...I cleaned the areas being bonded and 'glassed right back to matt to ensure proper , good adhesion ..then larger holes drilled in the top allowing access to smaller holes in lower section ...these have been screwed and glued ..I added possibly too much sikkoflex in my eagerness , but I will clean it back tomorrow to weld the panels in place ...

Bit more progress today but family and child duties meant that I only got 3 hours on the car ...Hoping to make up the shortfall over the weekend ..

I have continued the cill work ..welding the new section to the doorshut area and cut the bottom of the front wing to match ..when its all bolted up correctly it lines up nicely ..



I also managed to get the body off again and turned over so did a bit of glasswork around the boot perimeter and cut out and removed the roof vent



So , close of play today , the car is looking like an earlier version from the rear a bit more now....



Customers visiting Monday with a little pressie to add another change ...hopefully ..

THAT PICTURE PROBABLY SPEAKS FOR ITSELF .....

I have had to take a slight step backwards as the hinges had to be removed to do this mod ...I need to re-instate them about a half inch lower than standard with a spacer block between hinge and boot to compensate for the drop...not the end of the world but extra aggro ..

A couple of intensive days this week and a little help with the 2 man bits has resulted in the car getting a 'correct' rear screen aperture .
My customer turned up on Monday with a 250 SWB rear screen from GTO Engineering in Berkshire ..its the earlier vented example - perfect for our look .





This has really transformed the look of the car , it may not show in the pics very well , but the curved screen , wider glass , combined with filler cap / bootlid mod and the smooth roof , gives the car a great rear profile... I had to lower the boot hinges 15mm and 'relieve' the boot aperture a bit ...the original lip for the rubber seal ..

I have also shortened the passenger door 40mm in height , shortened the outer skin and reglassed it ...as well as fitting the first section of the raised cill as well ...





tomorrow should see the fuel pipes bonded on , as well as starting to modify the rear shelf to live with new hinge position and longer window aperture ...

Lots of work but its worth it
It will be very special when its finished

The rear window is a bit of a game changer, combined with the fuel filler it makes it the look to achieve. Well done. Was the window very expensive?

They are plastic and we need to make a little shroud to cover the vent , but agreed , it does look great .... They are £495 + vat = £594 !!

carrying on from yesterday , today I made a start on the rear shelf . It supports the rear body as well as blanking off the boot area visually . By enlarging and exposing the hinges , this panel no longer fitted . I cut the area around the original hinge points and cut along the side to allow the upright piece to be pulled out and down . The rear lip that supports the body was removed and replaced behind itself , if you get my meaning ...by glassing it back on alongside its original position it stretched the panel whilst retaining the adhesive lip ..I then glassed over all the gaps and splits to create a solid panel . Although not finished until the body is finally fitted , its a step closer ...
My customer wants a 3rd brake light on the rear shelf , hopefully this can be fitted through the original BMW rear panel ..




Work continues on the elongated front wings too ...a section of cill has been removed and joined to the front wing ..the original wings travel all the way to the bottom with a vertical line seperating it from the cill line ...we are trying to recreate that without complicating bonnet opening too much ...I have cut about 120mm of cill away and joined it on ...The internal section of inner wing has been cut back approx 150mm and capped off ...its early days but it looks like its going to work ..the front wings are close but they clear the tyres on opening .. last job today was glass all this together , next job will be to trim and tidy this area and re-cut the cill line to give the arch a longer and slightly more teardropped shape ... then I need to cap the cill sections left behind ... an initial patch has been temporarily rivetted and glued in place whilst I figure it out ... ....

Gary - This is really shaping up nicely.

I am always impressed when people who know what they are doing get "stuck in".

As I am sure that by the time the paint goes on, you would never know there have been so many changes to the fibreglass & metal work.

Good luck, Paul.

Thanks Paul ....Jeffy baby is the one who has the unenviable task of getting this one straight and in paint ...I am going to do an initial first pass with the filler when all mods have been finished , but straightening and final gapping is his domain ..

Carrying on from chopping the cill up ...I have finished one now subject to a bit of filler ...the second one needed a patch putting in where I cut too much off first go round ...I laid some glass onto the passenger cill on top of some parcel tape to create a patch panel for the repair ....this was cut in and glassed into place just before I left for the day ...

The first cill looks like this at the moment - notice I have slash cut the front edge slightly , trimming the BMW cill very slightly to get the inner arch to follow the new , longer flowing front arch that continues its line through the cill to help with the full wing appearance rather than seperate cill as the Tribute features ...( nothing wrong with the Tribute offering but my customer is wanting to enhance his example with a few tweaks towards the originals )



As there was some spare filler kicking around on a couple of occasions today - I always mix too much ! I started to gap the filler cap and straighten out the window aperture a bit too ...

Looking good Gary,

So the bonnet clears the tyre ok when opening ? how much wiggle room is their once it is lowered ?

The customer is popping in to see me this Thursday, means I will have to push a broom around again.

YES IT CLEARS ...My first attempt didn't ...I wanted the cut line as far out of sight as possible but the first one touched the tyres as it went past them ...I had to trim about another inch off to get clearance and cut the inners back , but they need cutting right back and re-modelling anyway ..the horizontal line is just out of sight ..if you stood right back , you'll see it , but its low enough to not draw your eye ..... the vertical line at that point and the extra taper on the wings will give it a different look ... I can't see lowering it changing any of the above ..

It was the cut and then re-trim that forced me to do the repair on the drivers cill ...

UPDATE ; The last couple of days have been fairly intense but some good progress has been made .
The customer visited yesterday and he decided he wanted the rear shelf as flat as possible towards the rear screen ...a slight ongoing mod on the hinges and I was able to flatten the hinge humps and re-glass the shelf pretty much flat ...



I also managed to do the latch mods on the BMW doors and fit the door skins and modified Herald handles ( The push bolt on the rear of the handle was replaced with one 15mm longer and bent 45 degrees approx. to strike the new latch plate )
I cut the recommended 100mm wide by approx 50mm deep hole 50 mm down from the top edge and 65mm from the rear edge ..a rectangular plate has been fitted to the mech. with the adhesive and a couple of pop rivets ...



Window frames are on and the 250 skins are pretty much fitted ..little bit of fettling needed but not bad first fit...



The rear quarters were pulled forward to match the doorline . I sliced the front face / door shut area and pulled it forward to duplicate the rear door line , braced it in position , put a flat sheet patch behind it and fibreglassed it in position ...


Final job of the day was to do the Hilltop mod of cutting the tabs off the screen pillar covers and bonding them on ....

Well Gary has pretty well done his part on this, he will be doing all the rebuilding after the body and paint is done.

It came over to my place earlier in the week, I have made a start, stripped all the fittings off, ground back all the flash lines and started the filler work.

I have had a play with the nearside door frame as it was sitting too low, much better now but still needs tweaking.

The mods the customer has asked for really have added quite a bit of time to this job, I do think it will look ok when done, my only concern or reservation is the bonnet to sill mod not sure if it looks 100 per cent right IMHO.

Whats with the big hole in the door?

Its not that hard to find the striker plate!

Watch this space Steve,

We have a cunning plan....

How did the leading edge of the door/ trailing edge of the bonnet go?
Any pictures?
It's nice to see the colour contrast between the filler and blue gel coat. Gives me a heads up on where to concentrate my efforts.
Doesn't look as if you have had to do much work to level up the bonnet aperture, or have you not got round to that bit yet?

Steve,

The bonnet aperture and flash lines need a lot more work, this is just the 1st pass with some filler.

I will bung some pics of my bonnet to door gap for you on my build thread, I am quite happy with the gaps on mine, still a bit to do but getting there.

Any progress?

Hi Steve,

Not done any more to my car, the work shop has been busy busy, the Garage has been in the family since 1979, we have a very large customer base and are always being recommended by those customers.

When I took the Blue car on I did explain to the customer that I would not turn away any of my regular customers who have been using us for years now, he was fully understanding regarding this.

I do keep him updated with the progress via e-mail and he pops in regular as his Daughter lives down the road from us.

Any way I have done a bit more to it, I got the door frames positioned a bit better, got them etch primed, 2k primed and painted silver, the reason they have been done at an early stage is because we are bonding and glassing the door skins on, so they need to be fitted now before paint.

I done the same to my doors ages ago, it does make the doors feel really solid when you close them, the only faff is that the outer door handles are a bit fiddly to fit, I have cut access holes in the old skins to fit them.

Some pics for those interested.



The glass does come out with the frames fitted, just one screw that is a bit fiddly, Then I had to sort out where the new body meets the old part up by the wind screen pillar and in the door shut above the striker.
This was the gap at the top.

So I riveted a small plate across and Glassed it in.


The part where the new and old meet in the door shut was just glassed together, it had split here so I ground it away.


So then I bonded and glassed the skins on, it was easier on mine as I cut all the inner frame away but on this one I just cut it, bent it out of the way and re welded it when done.


This was the Stixall stuff going on, very similar to Tiger seal a PU based adhesive.


A pic of my door, much easier access.

Once the doors were hung it was time for filling, not the best part of the job at all,but a necessary evil, and the customer had changed his mind regarding the way the bonnet met the sill, he wanted it putting back so that it would not compromise his wheel and tyre choice.







Lots more to do before paint, but it is getting there all be it slowly.

Good idea bonding the skins on. The only reason for having them removable I suppose is for door handle and mirror access and that can be done with access holes.
Rest of it is all looking good.