Installing Side panels

17th May 2006
I bought the side pods of eBay with a lot of competition from other people one was later to be a friend called David who I had met later on the Beach Buggy Web site. The GP panels were in good condition and I had been told that they would fit with some work.

As I was no longer a stranger to fibre glassing this was not going to cause a problem. The first problem was establishing which way round they went as it was not clear from the panels and they where not marked pointed out the correct.

I spoke to several friends that cleared up the problem about which way round they were to be fitted. I offered up the panels to the buggy's and could see that they would need some correction to be fitted. The back edge of the side pods seemed to be OK but the fronts needed about 2" removed from the side to allow the to fit under the lip of the buggy shell. I removed this with an angle grinder until my Kipor generator failed and then by using a conventional saw. My Kipor was just over a year old and to be honest I am not very impressed with this companies products and in my opinion I would not waste money on their products in future, enough said.

I had managed to cut the side pods down and they now fitted. Now I needed to find a way of mounding them on the chassis. It was obvious that I could make right angle brackets that would fit under the front of the side pod and attach them to the body. I used two of these and this enabled a front fixing.

I made a bracket in the shape of a Z piece I could mount this to the underneath of the perimeter body mount bolts and this would project forward enough to allow a bolt to be screwed up through the base of the side pod to attach the bottom to the chassis. I placed four of these made from stainless steel on each side and this seemed to firmly fix the side pods in place. I was not sure whether to make rear mounts and decided that I would leave this to a later date when I had some more stainless steel.

The side pods look great but I had to paint them the fitted well onto the chassis and I believed they improved the overall look of the car to give it a better finish. With the addition of the side pods the affect was good and when they were going to be great when they where painted black . My beach buggy was starting to get finished and I could see the possibility that it might be on the road really soon. I needed to paint the side pods and ensure that the car would pass an MOT and I needed to test all of the electrics and ensure the engine was workable. I had an intermittent fault on the front lights and was not sure why they would not always turn on. I was not sure why I was having to charge the battery so often and wondered if my wiring was correct here. The list was smaller but I new from prior experience things can take longer to achieve than you think.