Making front Body Mount & Shutzing bodywork

12th February 2010.
The body work was looking much better on the outside from its fresh coat of hammerite Paint.

I knew that I had to increase the height of the front body mount by 80mm as the body lift I had installed was already achieving this height. I also knew that I would have to move the steering column hole downwards to cater for this rise in height. Fortunately I did not just raise the hole 80mm by filling in the old hole and re-drilling. it seems the height is dependent on a triangulation with the fixed point of the steering box and the bulkhead. I used a piece of wood in the end exactly the correct length to just touch the bulkhead when it was laid alongside the steering box connector. This gave me the correct position of the hole and it seems as I had guessed it was not 80mm from the old hole.

I had made the front bracket originally out of strong material so felt I could bolt onto it a section of 80 x 40 x 3.1mm box. I used hidden Spiralux captive nuts to to enable me to put securing bolts in the middle of the box section. These push fit into a hole and a tool is used to compress the fitting behind the metal so that it makes a permanent fixing. I had already decided to make a bracket to hold the wings firmly this new 80mm area was a welcome fixing site. I bought some mild steel 40x 10mm x 1.5m and used this to lay a section down the side of the box. With this assembly held on with G- crams I was able to see that the location I had picked for the mounts in the wings directly corresponded with this position. I cut two 300mm lengths and two 50mm lengths of the 40mm x 10mm . The 300mm lengths I drilled three holes that corresponded with my mount bolt holes. I was able to bolt these 300mm brackets onto the bodywork. I then used the 50mm x 10 sections to join the two brackets together. This was achieved by cutting slopes on the 50mm piece until it fitted nicely between the two. I then used a clamp to hold the piece in situe whilst it was welded on the car. I repeated the same process for the other side removed the bar and trimmed the back side of the join before welding it on this side. I then bolted the bracket back in position and marked and drilled the bracket so that it could be bolted to the 80mm box. I was surprised just how much I could already feel how much stiffer the wings had become. I remembered my friend Jon having pulled over in front of me some time ago as he thought I had flashed him as we was driving over rough ground with him in front.

I had decided with some advice from a friend Jon to Shutz underseal the inside of my bodywork so giving it a slight texture before it was spray painted. I had used a Shutz underseal gun previously to coat the engine tin ware quite successfully and new that it was s good way of covering uneven surfaces. I bought a bottle of Shutz underseal from my car paint supplier and set about cleaning up the inside of the body work with an Electric DA. I masked the lip of the body so that no Shutz would come onto the body work and started to shutz the inside. The Shutz covered very quickly and soon I had the whole inside bodywork covered. I left this to dry. I had to use my friend Jon's compressor to get the Shutz gun up to its working pressure. I found that one bottle just covered the interior of the buggy, although I felt it will probably need a further coat. With the buggy sprayed with Shutz it was left to dry for some time before it was put back onto the chassis. I knew I would have to make a new bracket up for the dash board support to the steering column and felt that this would have the potential to mess up the new surface . As I needed a second coat of Hamerite and shutz I felt the best option was to mount the dashboard inside the car and manufacture a bracket that would hold the steering column as with this made up I new assembly would be easier and not damage the paint surfaces.

Bodywork improvements - two

6th February 2011
The body work was looking very much better. I decided that I needed to do a little more work on the body work to make a tighter fit to the body kit that I had fabricated as the work I had previously done on the rear was a major improvement. This adjustment process was a great deal easier than trying to fit the body work to the chassis as had been done before as the body lift kit could be placed on the upside down body work allowing easy measurement of the gaps . The front of the bulkhead did not fit tightly and fibre filler was used to bring these areas slightly over the size required so that they could be cut back. Both sides where increased so that there would be approx 4mm off-standing max. The back area was also sanded to make a crisp mating surface for the body kit. The driver side rear quarter also had a slight bulge in the fibre glass and this was sounded out to ensure both sides of the body work was the same when viewed from the rear of the body work.

With the new filled bodywork sanded to fit. I decided to use my remaindering Gray Gel coat to protect the newly fibre glassed areas. This tidied and sealed them up.

I realised that I needed to cut a new steering column hole and could find no measurement of the size of this hole any ware on the Internet . I only had a 51mm cutter so used this but in fact to fit the bush a 48mm or 1" 7/8" hole is required. I new I would have to find a different stronger seal.

The next job was to paint the underneath of the body work. I decided to but 2.5L of Black Hammered Hamerite . This seemed very thick and perfect to coat the underneath of the body work. Fortunately my friend John helped me with this painting as it took over an hour for two of us to paint it. Two coats required 2.5L of paint to complete the underneath. The finish was much better than I had expected to achieve and the whole underneath of the bodywork looked like fresh Fibre glass.

Will probably need to shutz underseal it inside the body work before the next paint coat goes on.