Making a reinforcement rear body support bar

25th June 2011.

Having managed to get my front bumper to fit I decided that in the light of my fuel regulator not turning up I would have to finally get round to building a new rear body support. This would be version two as the previous rear support although strong interfered with the position of my exhaust and I had to remove it . I decided that I would try to make the new support so that it could use one of the existing chassis mounts. I choose the mount nearest the shock absorber mount as this was quite near the body work and had a clean flat position near the body work. I bought some 40mm X 8mm stock mild steel 4m which I had cut into 1m 1.5m and 1.5m so that I could get them home from the steel suppliers. This was similar material I had successfully used on the front bar.

I started fabricating the bracket by measuring the distance from the bracket to the body work. This enabled me to make a piece up that would reach onto the body. I welded another piece onto this at right angle so that it would come out from the bracket and run flush. I placed this on the body work and measured the mounting hole coming through the chassis. This fixing was a M10 fixing so I drilled a 1.5mm hole in the bar. This could then be bolted onto the mount. I then used a different piece of bar held horizontal to work out the height that i wanted the bracket to be on the body. I welded this on and made another bracket mirroring the first. I tried to bolt this on but found that the body work was concave and not flat and therefore the body was sitting away from the bracket by some 25mm. I would need to bend the bar to make it follow the shape of the body work. This turned out to be more simple yet more involved than I anticipated. I first of all tried to heat up the bar, this could not get the bar hot enough to even start a bend. I eventually found three 22mm tubes and used two of them one side of the bar and one the other against the metal in a vice. The vice could be then be tightened to bend the metal work. I put three of these bends into the bar and repeated this on the other bracket. With the side brackets made I bolted them onto the car and measured the width of the body work to create a join between the two side brackets i measured this as 94cm and welded a bar on. I also added some small tabs to the side bars so that I could add an under seat support bar. I then tried to refit the bracket and to my dismay found that even with the 80 mm body lift kit there was not enough room to get the bar in without removing the engine. I decided the only option was to cut the bracket in half and lap another piece of 40mm x 150mm to splice the two pieces with bolts. I welded this to one half of the bracket and drilled the other half whilst the bar was still together before cutting it through one side. The resulting two bars then were fitted to the body work the bracket had to be pulled into the body work to allow the two bars to meet. The next problem to overcome was how to drill the body work behind the fan housing to get the bolts through the bracket and fibre-glass. I found that I could heat up a small wood working bradel and use this hot to push through the bar into the the fibre-glass marking the position of the hole as this would push tight through. I could then frill the holes from the inside of the body work. With the brackets mounted I started to fabricate the cross bar . This was made by measuring the distance between the two drop down brackets a length of 935mm bar was cut and some 90 degree up-stands welded on each end. This was then drilled so that it could be bolted to the tabs. I then took the brackets of and painted them with Acrylic black paint before refitting them to the car.

Whilst I was making this bracket I also found some Stainless steel and made a bracket for my front number plate. I made this is in a similar construction to my rear plate. I used an angle grinder to cut the perimeter after drawing around my number plate. I then drew diagonals onto the square plate so that I could drill the corners of the intersections. This meant I could then use the Angle grinder to cut out the inner triangles from the plate making it lighter. I then bent a piece of stainless steel 10" long x 4" this was then bolted onto the number plate backing and protruded enough over the bumper to allow two bolts to be used to bolt it securely on. The finished plate was then cleaned and thick number plate pads where used to secure on the the number plate.

I was still waiting for my fuel regulator to turn up it was the second one i had ordered that had not so far turned up and I was beginning to despair at eBay this rendered my engine not running and I was beginning to worry about time. I found out shortly later that the seller of my item only ships out Saturday morning. It would have been useful to have known this when buying. Hopefully this does mean that it should be with me by Wednesday latest.

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 - one

30th January 2011
The last day but one of January brought temperatures of 2.5 degrees outside and I knew i had a lot of fibre-glassing to do, which I knew would not be easy to achieve at these low temperatures.

The body work was starting to come along as it was slowly being rubbed down. I had always new that the design of the Fibrefab SWB Rat was very light and that some areas moved when the car was on the road. The worst of these was the front wings and headlights. In addition people for some reason think they can sit on car wings which on this type of buggy is not possible as the wings are not strong enough. With this in mind I had decided that with the body work off I could manage to build a mount that would hold the wings more rigidly. I bought some stainless steel fastenings from an online store these at first seemed difficult to locate as I new i wanted to fibre-glass a block of wood into the wing with some hidden bolts to mount the frame support. The main problem with this is that it is very difficult with a hidden bolt to stop the head spinning when you tighten it. I located some coach bolts that had a square on the underside of the cup. along with this I found some bar that was drilled with 8mm holes in a chain, 205 mm long and 19mm wide. I found that I could make these holes square with a file so that the head of the coach bolt would be captivated in it. I also bought some oak that was wide enough to take a channel to sit this metal work into. I used a router to cut this channel and assembled the two fixings easily. I used a DA to clean the underside of the wing back to the fibre-glass. This would provide me with a location to bolt to on the underside of the wing. I used hairy fibre glass filler to bond the wooden anchor points onto the underside of the frame. After bonding the wooden anchors on by filling the groove up with filler and then mating them onto a bed of filler I managed to build up enough hairy filler to make the bracket slope into the underneath of the wing. I had nearly completed both anchors when I realized I was running out of filler. I would have to wait for this to dry and purchase some more filler to complete smoothing them into the wings.

With the body work upside down I also noticed that the underside of the shell did not mate as well as it could do. I used the the body kit frame on the underneath of the body to improve the angles of the back transom. This was really a try bit by bit operation , which |I must confess was a little easier than mating it to the chassis. used the DA to cut the body work down . It was to high were I had made it up with fibre-glass and improved it significantly by this trial and error approach. There was some areas that needed making up with 5mm of filler so I knew my visit to buy more fibre-glass filler was going to have to be very soon.

With the 1.8ml tub of Fibre filler purchase I started work making up the back section . I knew this was going to be an overnight hardening process so set about making good with the filler using a straight edge to ensure the angles where good and straight . I also filled the center area so that it could be cut back to fit the body kit tighter. You can see the result of using the fibre filler really improved the back section. The drying time for this filler is usually 20 mins and I new as the temperatures was very low that there was not much chance of this drying other than over night.


The next morning I returned and applied more fibre fill to the front wings to smooth out the wing around the mated on block. I built up the edges with fibre fill so that the gradient between the block and the wing was smooth making the block disappear into the fibre glass wing. I new this would take a long time to dry out so left the fibre fiiller over night to really harden up. The smooth finish I would need to coat with a skin of fibreglass mat to seal it in from the weather. I new that the filler would need to harden off and that it needed to be totally dried out before this was applied.

Manufacturing a body lift kit - part four

19th June 2010
The previous weeks have been very busy and I have not had the opportunity nor the weather to get the body lift kit cut down and welded. Fortunately there was a small break in my time that coincided with reasonable whether albeit raining to all all the rails to be cut down and cramped to the chassis prior to welding.

I had previously spent some time trying to neaten up the welding this actually was costly in time. As when I was improving the welds I found that the heat I had applied to the curves had reshaped the curves so they no longer fitted. The only option was to cut new slices into the rails and re weld whilst the section was cramped to the chassis. This worked very well and it appeared both sides had warped due to this clean up. The picture right shows the cuts that were made and welded up to bring the curves back in line. Once the curves were cut the side pieces were cut to length. This was achieved by placing both front and back sections on the chassis and marking their positions on the chassis. This could then be transferred onto the side bars and the cuts where made to match the profile of the front and back sections where they mated. The front sections where fairly square the rear sections approach the side at a slight angle. This required a 5-6mm angle to be cut onto the side rail. A friend came by who uses a MIG welder and wanted to try ARC welding As I new the outer sections would need flushing I let him try his hand. Fortunately he made a pretty good job.

The welds where soon completed and the body lift frame was left on the chassis to cool down in preparation to a clean down with a grinder. Four end plates where cut out and cleaned up so that they could be welded into the ends of the body lift kit tubing. This would keep the moisture out of the tubes and make the section solid. The perimeter holes would then be needed to be marked from the underneath the chassis and the center punched and drilled. Once the welds where cleaned up the whole body lift frame would be prepped to be taken to be hot zinc sprayed and then blacked. This process was the best way of stopping the steel from rusting as it was used successfully on bumpers and roll bar parts to keep them clean. The process was original developed for 4x4 bumpers as the knocks ride of the zinc coating and the item can just be re blacked to bring it back to the same finish.

The most important thing I found when building this is that the curves cannot be made my bending the tubing. If you try this yourself you will find your body will not fit on top as the top of the tubing curved radius will be different to the bottom. Originally I thought I would have this manufactured at about £150.00 . The materials cost £50 for the 75mm box tubing 3m length. 20 cutting disks £20.00, and 100 welding rods. I would imagine having completed this it would have cost me £350.00 - £450.00 to have had built from the same materials.

Fitting the turbo lump to the strengthened gearbox - part one

12th December 2009.
The installation of my turbo engine back into my buggy was something that I had long awaited. I had had the engine with some parts mounted for the turbo sometime ago but it was going to be interesting fitting the completed engine and my spirits were high as I new with it fitted I only had to plumb the fuel up to the engine through the new pump to get the engine fired up.

From the onset this proved more difficult than I had underestimated the extra height the pressure caps took and the cross air intake ducting had took the engine height much higher. I decided I would have to jack the rear of the car up and allow the engine to go under the rear boot area. This soon became difficult and I realised that the caps and engine would not fit under the engine compartment. In addition there seemed to be some interference with the ceramic drag exhaust and the CSP Torque bar. The exhaust J tube went right through where the torque bar anchored. My own bar that I had made up to support the rear seat area fitted perfectly.

I decided that I would have to remove the CSP Torque bar diagonal triangulations to the frame horns and remove the pressure ducting and caps so that the engine would fit and the Clarence issues could be seen. The engine fitted perfectly after these items had been removed. I had enlisted some friends to help me lift the engine.

With the engine fitted the top of the carburetors and the clearance can be seen in the photograph to the left. It can bee seen that the wooden block and the lower tear of the back was obstructing the pressure caps from going on. It was clear I would need to do some re modeling of the rear to allow for these parts to be fitted. In addition I knew that the CSP Torque bar would never fit with these J tubes I wondered if different tubes could be made up which would not interfere with the CSP Torque bar.
I was gutted my turbo engine refit was slowly turning into a disaster and a new list of jobs to complete. I started looking at the rear body work on an attempt to figure how to modify the rear of the buggy to allow the components to be fitted. I new I would have to sketch out some ideas for this before starting to cut the rear end and re-fibreglass it to shape. I tried to see whether I could modify the rear of the chassis by moving up the rear wing. This looked like the most easiest and best option and would mean with careful cutting the approximate shape could still be captured giving enough clearance underneath for the new turbo pressure ducting system. I would have to remove the engine and cut the fibreglass before re-bonding it in place. |The photo above shows the approximate difference with the area moved up. You must ignore the lover light clusters which would not be there after the wings were highered. I used a photo to see how it would look.

Body work and Gel coating the rear seating area

18th November 2009
Since making my rear body support I had noticed that the rear seating area that it attached to on the left side was not allowing it to sit straight. This was mainly caused by the fibre glass seat area work that I had undertaken in Mad March affairs with the CSP Torque bar installation and rear body modification but not been able to get access to. Luckily with the engine still out I was able to dismantle the body support and the torque bar to give access to the area under the seat. Where I had moulded the shape on cardboard sections there had been some seapage underneath that was obstructing the off side body support bracket. I used a rotary disk sanding attachment for my drill with an 80 grade disk. This cut the area back so that it was in line with the bottom panel. The process was slow going but rewarding as it gradually came back in shape.

The next problem was going to be how to remove the gel coat from the areas where I wanted to fibre glass were they were very close to the chassis or suspension. I had to think about this as I didn't want to spend a lot of money buying a Black and Decker rotary file. I remembered using a carpet layers knife in the past and set out to see if I could find one to see if I could cut the old gel coat off in slices.

When I cleaned up the left hand side I noticed that the bracket came back into orientation. I had to fill the holes I had made to mount it originally, I cut the surounding area down with the rotary sander from both sides and re fibre glassed from both sides to make a strong bond and re drill to bolt to its new location.

I was going to try to get my grey gel coat in a jar from the last place I got it made up a small fibre glass company. Unfortunately I believed they had moved on so a new search was on to find another company that would be so reciprocating. The red I thought would only come from one source as its not used commercially or so I thought. Luckily a search using the Yell search engine provided me with a surprise that the company Castle Mouldings I had purchased the original gel coat was still trading and would happily still sell me gel coat. This was great news and the gel coat was applied using a brush to the new fibre glassed panels. The red was quite a bright colour and hoped that it would merge with the existing coat overtime as the grey had done some years previously. I used about 5% catalyst with the gel coat as it was quite cold . I mixed up the grey gel coat and coated the underneath of the seat area. Some of the underneath was not accessable and I new I would have to attend to this at a later date. After considering the areas I had gel coated I decided to cover the whole rear seating area. The fibre glassing work that had been done on the underneath of the body whilst on the car had not been done as neatly as I would have liked with the body removed. I am hoping that at some point in the future this can be re addressed.

I also managed to sell my twin manifolds and linkage kit I had bought prior to deciding to go turbo. This was going to be helpful as I hoped it would allow me to buy an inter cooler for the engine. The search was now also on to find one. I was not sure after searching through the classifieds online whether this was going to be easy.