Increasing the hieght of my GP side pannels by 80mm

19th April 2011
I decided that after working on the bonnet of the buggy so successfully I would increase the height of my side pods myself.

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I decided the best approach to this was to use a marking gauge to mark off 15mm along the bottom edge of the side pod. I then used an angle grinder with a thin cutting blade to cut of this section. I made pieces of wood up to space the 80mm gap for the new height, this was checked again along the whole length of the cut before I started to fibre glass up the gap.
I used a piece of plastic cable trunking to span the gap I cut this out of a 4" box so that I just had a flat piece from the side and laid it into the gap using resin to adhere it. I then used fibre glass matting to cover the whole area on the inside of the side pod. This made a very strong joint which enabled me to remove the pieces of wood I had used to separate the two sections. I then used more plastic I had cut out of the box to make up the inside where the pieces of wood had been. You can see from the picture right that this made the side pod rigid especially when the side pieces where fibre glassed in place. The surface of the side pod now had a channel running through the front of it. I couldn't make up my mind what to do with this channel but for speed I used fibre filler P40. to fill the gap up . I had previously used this with good results and found that four 600ml tins was just enough to fill the two channels on both side pods. The picture right shows the channel filled with p40 and the reverse side of the other side pod fibre glassed over the plastic cable conduit. The P.40 had filled the gap nicely , however it gave a very ruff surface . This was rubbed down with 80 grit sandpaper to bring the surface back to a flatter finish . I then used p.48 body filler to fill the surface of this area. You can see from the picture that the side pods are starting to take shape . More sanding was then required to flat off the surfaces. When I was reasonably happy with the outside I painted the inside of the side pods with Hammerite Hammered black paint. This I had found was quite durable and made a much cleaner finish. I then sprayed the outside with High build 2K UPOL Primer filler using a friends professional spraying workstation. I hoped this would be powerful enough to spray the whole car

Next time I would need to paint the body work.